The Thursday Scramble: Round 4 – Gather Round

How good is this.  Not only is everyone in Adelaide, but we have a full slate of games this week with no teams on byes! No hiding rubbish scores due to best 18 so all those 20s and 30s, everything is gonna count, so that means we gotta Scramble!!

Early Round Strategy

Now that we have seen three and a half rounds of games we can really start to get a feel for some trends for some players. It is time to also cut your losses and swallow your pride if you have made a mistake early on and just correct it. But we also need to keep in mind that we need to continue making money.

Firstly, we know that breakevens and making money are big things in this game, but we also know that some of our starting squad will be with us at the end. So with my keepers I simply don’t worry about their BE (unless they are scoring so badly that I need to move them on). So guys like Bontempelli who has a BE of 136 don’t phase me as I know that he will be in my team for the season (baring injury). I certainly don’t like the strategy of trading out a guy like Bont when he has a high BE with the hope of picking him up later on when he gets cheaper. As I have said a million times in this column is that there will always be something else happen that will mean that you can’t get him in when you are planning to.

Now having said that we need to discuss Daicos. His quiet game against the Lions wasn’t something that we saw coming. I think if we knew that there would have been more coaches willing to not start with him. He has a BE of 134 now heading into the Finn game. There will be a lot of keen eyes on teams tonight and particularly when final Sunday teams are named on Sunday to see whether Maginness is in the side. If he is in the side it is very highly likely he goes to Daicos and we know how that story has ended in the past. So this would be the one exception where I would say you could trade out your premium with a bye coming up. If you were to trade Daicos now and then he scores an 80 against the Hawks then has the Bye in round 5 you could see him really come back to the pack in terms of price either before or after round 6. It is a risky play, but we all know what you need to do to get the biscuit! I didn’t start with Daicos so I am hoping that he has a poor game this week. But if I had him and had no other fix ups to do I would seriously consider trading him.

One game does not make a season

So on strategy, there were a lot of teams that jumped off of Young, Martin, Bonner and others before last week and we all know how that panned out for them. Look, I get it, I toyed with the idea of moving on Young and Bonner myself after they let me down the week before. But in the end I had other issues to deal with such as making sure I had the right cash generators in my side and I got in Powell and Dempsey. That proved to be the right strategy.  Something I have done poorly in past seasons is play around too much side swapping mid-pricers and premiums and I haven’t had enough cash generation going on so this year I am prioritising getting my cash going and I think I have done ok.  All of those three guys had a game where we really questioned whether they should be in our sides but ultimately they have paid off so holding was the right call to make

However, this can also backfire spectacularly and that is the case with a bloke called Billings. Many of us didn’t start him after he was the sub in round 0, then after that big score in round 1 we jumped aboard thinking we had found the holy grail! However, since then he has turned out to be a disaster. His BE is now up at 72 and he is going to bleed cash, so even if you only brought him in recently it is time to part ways. The difference between Billings and the other three is that he has had only one good score whereas the others have put in some solid scores. Also Billings has had the vest in two of four games and if that isn’t enough to trade him out I don’t know what is.

Fixture Alert!

Sound the alarm Calvin!  This weekend at Gather round there is a game at 5pm Friday afternoon (Eastern time) between the Lions and Kangaroos. So just beware and be ready for this. The game will start just as the final teams for Sunday come out so don’t get too caught up in that such that you forget to make sure your line up is all good to go with all loopholes ready and waiting. My recommendation would be that once the Crows v Demons game starts tonight, get the rest of your team set and ready to go assuming all will be ok with the Sunday teams, then check it all again after the Thurs night game or on Fri morning just in case you have to take Max’s VC score. The last thing you want to do is be looking t teams and looking to make changes only to realise that the Fri early game has started.

Things To Remember:

• Every Point Counts this week, so do a bit of research into your rookies on field. You will lose at Rookie Roulette sometimes but at least you can say you made an educated guess.
• There are lots of events around Adelaide on the weekend so if you are in town have a look. I think there are still tickets to The Keeper League live show on Friday afternoon which will include Warnie so head to Heff’s site and pick up a ticket.
• Plan your trades with the two remaining mini bye rounds still to come. I would love to get Heeney in but don’t want to do it the week before his bye.
• Start to keep an eye on your targets and plan your trades a few weeks ahead if you can, better to have a plan you have to change than to have no plan at all.

For all of you coming to Adelaide for Gather Round I do hope our great state treats you well.  I will be at the Power v Essendon game (what a surprise) but can’t get to the others. With best 22 scores this week we should see some more movement in the rankings and some coaches who have been trading around the byes may get caught out.  As Selby likes to say it is like when the receding tide exposes those swimming naked! And with that thought, have a great weekend of footy with a full 9 games and I’ll see you all next Thursday morning.

Dunny

A passionate Port Adelaide Fan who simply loves footy! That is how I would describe myself. Catch my weekly article "The Thursday Scramble" with all the last minute things to think about for the weekend Follow: @pkd73.