The Thursday Scramble: Round 9

As we clear the first third of the season, we drove straight into a s#!t storm!!  What a week, could you believe what we saw last weekend, some massive scores but as the Fantasy Gods giveth, they also taketh away!  Injuries, Vestings, some kick to kick and just general rubbishness! Time to Scramble!!

Decisions to Make!

As I’ve been telling you for the last few weeks, it is always better to keep your upgrade cadence moving forwards rather than sideswapping premiums or midpricers. The reason that I tell you to do that is exactly for weeks like this one. There will be a lot of teams that won’t be able to improve their teams by as much thanks to the injuries that they have copped from round 8. There will always be weeks like this one where we have to take a little pause and address the problems at hand. Now does that mean we won’t be able to improve our teams? Hell no, of course we can still make some improvements but we need to be smart about our trading.

The consensus opinion this week was that we all got out of Elliot Yeo more than we thought we would. And I tend to agree. With the injury history of that bloke we can’t be surprised that he finally fell apart on us. But his scoring til now has been fantastic and he has made us plenty of cash. Similarly a bloke that was on m never again list (until his price this year was just too tempting) has been Zac Williams, he has been threatening to fall apart a few times so far but now we finally know he is going to miss this week. So for me he is another one to cash the chips in and get someone else.

But…..  do we cash them in over a rookie that is going to likely lose money this week?  I am generally one to say cash in the player that is going to lose money over one that is injured and their price won’t change. However, when the guys we are talking about are worth this much we just can’t leave that sort of cash on the bench. So I would say trade out the blokes that are going to miss weeks in the order of the number of weeks they are likely to miss.  If we were talking about a rookie with an injury, then I say hold and deal with other issues first, but this is a different ball game.

While we are talking about decisions, I think we have to talk about Nat Fyfe. Now should we have been surprised that he had a vesting last week, probably not, indeed we should have seen it coming. We know he has had body issues in the last few seasons, we saw that he is holding up well with his performance in round 7. But… with the Dockers having a soft match up against Richmond last weekend (sorry Tigers fans, but your team isn’t going well) we should have realised that the Dockers didn’t need Fyfe in the guts to get the W. So early on when form of other teams started to show itself, they would have pencilled this one in for Fyfe to have a vest-rest. My personal opinion is that unless he is carrying something we don’t know about, he should now be vest free until his bye. That might just be the time we wave good by to Nat as he has done his job.

Oh, and don’t think I forgot about Connor Rozee and his troublesome hammy. I think Port will be very cautious, they play Geelong away this week then the Hawks at home which is a game they should win (I certainly hope they do). So I am fully expecting them to take no risks whatsoever with Rozee and I think he is likely to miss two. And in AF, that means trade.

But how does that help me?

Well the fact that we have higher priced guys in Rozee, Yeo and Williams injured this week (and assuming you have at least one of them) means that rather than trying to go up and down from a low base rookie, you have a fully priced guy who is no doubt worth more than most rookies to use as your base making it easier to get to a top player and it should leave you some cash left over for that second trade or indeed to hold to help with next week’s upgrade. Be strategic with this bounty of cash. make sure you are getting the best bang for your buck by going one of the top priced premiums who is in form if you can. But also keep an eye on those byes. It is only 3 more full rounds til the byes are upon us.

Fixture Alert

With Mother’s Day on Sunday there are two games on Friday night and the do overlap! So before you get stuck into the beers/wines/whatever else you drink, make sure you have checked all four of the teams players on the Friday night games.

Things to Remember

• When a premium goes down like Green don’t panic too much, rest in the knowledge that heaps of teams have him.
• Captain’s don’t always pay off, sometimes taking that 110 VC might be the smart play.
• Be the Nerd and start planning for those byes, they aren’t far away!

There we have it folks, a few thoughts on the week from hell. I haven’t said much about those that had huge scores, but really, those guys aren’t the ones we have anything to worry about. Again, apologies if I haven’t answered your comments to this article in the last couple of weeks. Work is crazy for me at this time of year and I don’t always get a chance to log in and have a look so thanks to all of you for reading and also helping each out in the comments.  Catch you all next week!

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.