The Thursday Scramble: Round 12 – Bye Week 1

Don’t say we didn’t warn you, the byes are here and hopefully you have had some time to plan and things haven’t been screwed over by suspensions and injuries!  No matter where you stand on the byes, it is time to Scramble!

But why trade someone in that is going to have a bye?

Great question. We have three trades this week but why would we use them when the traded in player will have a bye in the next few weeks. Well there are a few good reasons to do it and to use your trades wisely.

Firstly, if you have someone that is injured that is going to miss more than one of the byes then you should be moving them on. The best example of this is Joe Richards. We were hoping that he would be someone we have for all the byes and is now going to miss the next four weeks. No matter how much cash he was going to generate it is just too risky to hold him over these four weeks and possibly leave you short of players.

Another trade that you could use this week is to balance out your byes if you need to. So if you are not balanced in the way we would like then you can use this round to do some balancing. You want to have more players available in the early rounds and less in the last so you can trade out of players in the later rounds and into those that have their bye this week.

My last type of trade that I would tick off would be ‘sideswapping’ your rookies and mid pricers up to premiums who are all on their bye this week. So you aren’t going to be hurting your future weeks and this is only a move that I would do if you have at least 21 players available to play this week.

Don’t Outsmart Yourself!

Last week we had the late out of Flanders to deal with. By the time we found out about this many people had already enacted a loop to bring on a great score from one of the rookies this week. We had Sharp and Richards as well as Garcia who were great and many brought a red dot on field to take them. So by the time we heard Flanders was missing some people’s loops had been locked in or their links to the midfield/forwards were locked out.

So if you are going to use a loop just make sure you still have a few options left to you in the event of a late out over the weekend.

Bye Basics

I know that you have all been here before, but just a few simple things that can be forgotten in the heat of the moment!

• Players on the bye aren’t locked til the start of the last game. You can move them around and use them as a loop right up until then.
• Your best 18 have to come from on field positions and an emergency will only count if an on field player is not playing, same as normal.
• You have three trades to use in each week of the byes (in RDT and SuperCoach if you still have any boosts left you can use 4 trades in each week).
• The ultimate aim is to come out of the byes with a better team than you started with and hopefully with no more rookies on field.
• In RDT and SuperCoach I like to have at least 7 trades left out of the byes but some more aggressive coaches may come out with 5.

Remember it is unlikely that you will have a perfect team for each round but if you treat it like one big long four week round you just need to make sure your ranking is better and your team is stronger after than before.

If your draft league isn’t playing the byes, don’t go to sleep! There are still waiver pickups that you can make that might get you ahead of the competition.

Things to Remember

Don’t Panic!  It is easy to make a mistake and just don’t rush your decisions and make sure you are planning all of your trades and your team for the four weeks of the byes but just remember you need to have some contingency plans

The other things to remember…. well they are above in the bye basics.

The good thing about the byes is that we generally don’t have any overlapping games so that makes it easier to watch more games and enjoy the footy.  Have a great weekend and see you all again next Thursday.

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.