The Thursday Scramble: Round 19

So we survived Carnage Week in Round 18 with suspensions and injuries hurting us, only to have more suspensions and injuries coming at us for this week. However, thankfully they aren’t to as many gun fantasy players this time. But, do we know everything yet? Could we get struck with more? Well that can only mean one thing…. Scramble!!

Is Defence the best Offence?

I know what you are thinking, what is this guy on about. Well hear me out. What I am thinking here is back on a topic we visited a few weeks back. We talked a lot about the bench and what we should be doing there and how we can use it to cover our players. I want to revisit this with a bit of a different slant on it.

So we get Heeney back, but we also could be without Max again this week, Caldwell is also in doubt if you believe everything you read and we don’t know if Sexy or Fish are going to return either. A question that has popped up on a lot of things I listen to this week is “When should I be ditching my bench players for red dot rookies for the cash”.

That play certainly has its merits but when is the time that we should look at enacting it?

If you had done this over the last few weeks and “left your bench to rot” then you would have found yourself in a world of pain if you were missing three of your best 22 last week as you may have had no one in that line to use as cover or someone that is just not performing but you could never get round to trading them out. I will put my hand up, I still have Zach Reid from the Bombers on my bench because I have had plenty of other issues to deal with each week and he just doesn’t make me any money if I trade him out so he hasn’t been high up on my list of blokes to get rid of. However, if you have found yourself in this situation and you suffer a few more outs at selection tonight you will find yourself having to cop a donut and no one wants that.

Conversely, if you have been very diligent with your bench and you have a full playing bench each week it can cause you some other problems (first world problems to be fair) and that is that it makes it very difficult to do any looping so you may have had a Humphries on the bench with an E and no way to get him on and it can also make using the VC loophole difficult too. Now granted, these are good problems to have, much better than getting stuck with a potential donut. But what it says to me is that it is good to have a bit of a balance with your rookies. I don’t mind carrying a couple of red dot rookies and usually I prefer them to be dual position players so that I can move them around easily. And the advent of the Utility spot in AF has made holding them and moving people around much easier.

But, when is it time to ditch your good playing rookies for the bottom price, never gonna play guys? I would probably leave it for a couple of weeks yet if you are able to make all the moves you want to as we still have 6 rounds of footy to go and the more options you have the better. And we know that some of the clubs that won’t be making finals are likely to start putting players out for surgery in a few weeks if they get a niggle.

If you have some solid DPP bench cover guys like a Fyfe or a Dowling then I think you can afford to have one red dot guy on each line that is worth not much, just make sure you use that money strategically. If you can have some cash in the bank at the end of each round it can be a big advantage heading into the following round so if you get someone that gets injured in the first term and dumps a heap of cash, you have some reserves to get that guy back up to a top premo without having to sacrifice a good rookie to a red dot. But you don’t want to be carrying hundreds of thousands either, we need that money earning us points.

Lots of ramblings there, but I guess when I say good defence is the best offence, what I am meaning is, build your bench with solid players that you can move around and cover the inevitable issues we will have on the way home. They may not be superstars that mean you need to drain your cash reserves and dump half your bench to red dot rookies, but if you have some guys that are handy and can come on your field in a pinch, then they are the defensive play that can get you through. To me it is all about balance and options. The more of each you have, the easier you will find it getting to the other end of the season.

A quick SuperCoach Tutorial

Now I know a lot of you don’t like SuperCoach, but I do, it is a different game with different scoring which can be a bit of a mystery. But, in the most recent episode of The SuperCoach AFL Podcast, there is a 20min segment with Fantasy Freak where he goes into a fair bit of detail about how the scoring works and talks about some of the common misconceptions. So if you are interested in SuperCoach or want to know a bit more about how it works, I would highly recommend listening to that segment, it starts at about the 24min mark of the episode. I can’t vouch for the rest of the ep as I only listened to that segment as any insight into the scoring can only help you if you play that game.

Things to Remember

• Just two more games before league finals now.
• Start using the Scale of Hardness more and more to select your trade in targets for the rest of the year as not every team has an equal run.
• Don’t give up! Teams will start dropping out and your rank can skyrocket.

So there you have it, the ramblings of a mad man. I do hope that what I said above made sense and that it helps you think about what you should do with your bench on the run home a bit more. None of this is gospel and different things work for different people, but they are just some of the ways I think about things.

Let me know in the comments what you would like me to discuss in the up coming rounds. As always, I like to talk more about the strategy as there are plenty of pods on who to pick over who etc each week and I like to try and give you a few things to think about on how your team can improve by just looking at the game a little different.

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.