The Thursday Scramble: Round 17

The fantasy season is fast reaching the end. Are you ready for it? We saw a few things last week that we can take into the rest of the season and there are plenty of decisions to make between now and that final lockout in round 24. Time to Scramble!

Looping your 23rd

So you have gone and got yourself a 23rd (or even 24th) premium that you want to use on the run home or you are about to. That’s great, but just because you have them doesn’t mean that they are going to count for you each week. What are the things you need to think about before you try and activate them each week?

• Who are you going to use as you 23rd? There is no point using a 23rd player off the bench if they are playing on a Sunday, and you aren’t going to use one of your guns as your bench player either. The player you want to use should be someone that is playing early and has a high risk of a Tag (see Calvin’s Tag Watch) or they are someone that has a bad match up (see the Scale of Hardness) or they are just on a bit of a down run of form. One of the keys here is that you don’t want to use someone who plays late as it really limits your options of who you can substitute them in for. The earlier they play the more chance you have of being able to use them.
• What line do you use them on? Again see point 1, you want to use them on the line where you are more likely to have a rubbish score from someone. For most of us that is going to be the forward line. If you have a Sexy or a Fish as your F5 or F6 (or both) then if you can have someone like a Fyfe that is a chance to have a good score then you could sub him in for one of those two guys if he scores over an 85 (or whatever the line you have set yourself is)
• You need a red dot! This is obviously a crucial part. If you don’t have any red dots then you can’t loop them onto the field and you simply have to use those tools I mentioned in the first point and work out which of your 9 mids or 7 forwards/defenders that you think will score the poorest and move them to the bench.
• Timing is everything. Make sure you have time between games to sub that Red dot on and move someone off to get that bench player score (because of course you have remembered to put the E on them).

All of these things are really simple but they are just another thing we need to think about if we are going to execute the use of the 23rd premium properly. I would love to have taken Fyfe’s score last week as he was riding my pine with the E but at the time I didn’t have anyone that I wanted to move off the ground to be able to use that score and hence I was just stuck, but it would have been very handy if I did get a late out!

Don’t kid yourself, this game requires a lot of planning and thought to get it all right and by just executing a few of these things you can certainly propel yourself up the rankings over those that don’t get it right.

The Run Home

I am going to mention this a few times from here but as the games remaining dwindle the teams your players are going to become more and more important. We all know that the AFL draw isn’t even and some teams have harder runs than others. This is where our coloured pen loving pirate comes in handy with the Scale of Hardness as you should be using that each week to make sure that you are fielding the players with the most favourable matchups.

Is CashGen Still Important?

Absolutely it is. Just because you have a team of premiums it doesn’t mean you aren’t going to need cash. If one of your guys goes down early in a game they can drop a heap of cash so you should have that WarneChest behind you wherever you can to make sure that you can get that injured player up to the very best on that line that is available to you. This is where some players do get caught out as they need to settle for whatever they can afford and often that isn’t a very palatable option!  So just make sure you can avoid that situation by making sure that you keep your cash generation going if you don’t have any ‘big dog’ swaps to do.

Things to Remember

• Just 4 more rounds to go before most league finals start. So keep an eye on the prize
• Don’t discount those debutants. As I said above you are still going to need cash gen.
• Double and triple check your loops for your VC/C guys. Just don’t let that simple part of your game slip.

Not long to go in the season now folks and whilst a lot of what I have had to say today should all be second nature to us, it is always good to have a timely reminder. As always keep helping each other out in the comments here, it is great to see all the Thursday Scamblers helping each other out. See you all next week. As always, if you have any topics you want me to cover on the run home please tweet me @pkd73

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.