The Thursday Scramble: Round 21 – Finals Week 1

Hard to believe we are at the finals already. But here we are. Your team is set, you know what you are doing and you are destined for glory!  No? Well, that means we need to Scramble!

Finals Tactics

If you are a regular reader of the Thursday Scramble over the years you should be more than prepared for the finals and what you need to do. It is about this time of the year where you need to make a few small adjustments to your game plan if you are up in contention for overall (or that is your focus) or if you are now going to focus on your leagues.

Overall Focus – If you are heading for Overall then you want to be using all the data you have to see the popularity of the players in the teams around you have. Try and find that edge that will get you a jump on your direct competition. But you can do this in a few different ways.

• Trade in a unique. If everyone else and the common perception is that you should zig then you should consider zagging. If the consensus is to take one player, then consider taking a different one. Yeah, it may blow up in your face but you may also look like a genius. Remember back when Gawn went down and a lot of coaches went to English but others went to Xerri. It turns out that Xerri was the right answer (so far). So don’t be afraid to be different.
• Take a risk on a captain. This is even more applicable to your VC. Take a flyer on someone that has a high ceiling and a great match up. They don’t have to be one of the popular ones and in fact it is even better if they aren’t. But if you want to lift up the ranks then it is worth risking it for the boost.

League Focus – The advantage you have here is that you can see your opponent’s team, well at least as it stood at the end of the last round. So you can see what you are up against. Use this to your advantage.

• Go unique or cover – So as with above you could pull a unique into your team to try and get the advantage. But, if you have some other uniques in your side but one of their uniques worries you, then try and bring that player in and cover it off and then trust your uniques to get the job done.
• Use the rolling lockout to your advantage – The rolling lockout really gives you a bit of an edge in that you can use it to see the moves your opponent is making as the round progresses. You can see who they are VC’ing and C’ing and then take advantage of this and try and either cover or beat. But something you can do which may help you and fool them if they are keeping an eye on your team and that is to make your changes as late as possible before the lockout for the relevant game. Just don’t leave yourself short of time!

Personally I usually just try and boost my rankings and if I do that and I get the best score I can the league can usually take care of itself, but if your team is really close in structure to an opponent in a favourite cash league, then certainly use the plans to try and get that league win and hopefully bank some cash.

RDT and SC Trades

Hopefully you have saved yourself a couple of trades for the finalises we know we will get the inevitable injuries or suspensions. Normally our rules are that if someone is only going to miss the one week we hold our trade and we keep the player. Well if you have 3 or more trades left in this format now you throw that rule out the window. Remember one week out now is a quarter of the remaining games in the season and the points are much harder to make up from there on the run home. If you have just the 1 or even 2 trades, and you have some half decent cover. Then I would say see if your bench cover (hopefully they play early) can be looped on if they have a good score and hold that trade. Ideally I would like to hold at least one trade into the Prelim final week (r23) if I can.

Obviously if you get a multi week injury or suspension, then it is simply a must trade.  No questions asked!

FIXTURE ALERT

I have no idea why, but there are two games on Friday night this week with the Eagles hosting the Suns and the Demons and Dogs battling it out. The Eagles game starts a bit later as it is in Perth but don’t forget and think that all is said and done once the early game starts. Be alert for both sets of subs and late outs and that you will have four teams locked in on Friday night. Although on the upside this does give us more options for an early VC!

This is your Scramble!

Hey all, so as most of you know, I like to go a bit into the gameplay rather than the who to trade in over who, and I know there are so many podcasts and blogs out there that will focus on should I bring in Bont or Gulden based on matchups etc. I like to try and talk about the gameplay and just give a few hints and tips and really just bring some thoughts back to the forefront of your mind. No matter how long you have been playing this game, we all need gentle reminders sometimes, things like check your C and VC are in the right order, don’t play in the same time slot and that you can activate them if the VC gets a good score.

So I guess I want to put it out to all of you, let me know what you would like to hear about each week, you can tweet me @pkd73, leave a comment below (I don’t always get to them during the day but I do read them after work) and I will try and cover those topics in upcoming weeks. This time of the year, if you are still reading you are probably doing quite well (better than me in AF no doubt, not my best season) and I may not be able to help you too much but really I just want to thank you all for keeping on reading and supporting my writing and the DTTalk website in general. We are all here for you and happy to help when we can.

Things to Remember

• I’ll say it every week. Check the matchups of those players you plan to bring in. Just four games to go and the difficulty of schedule is different for everyone.
• I seem to be having less red dots this year, so if that is the same for you, just make sure you have your VC planned. Often earlier in the round is best.
• Keep on pushing. The season goes right to the end and you can gain some big leaps in the rankings over the last couple of rounds.

That’s it from me for this week, have a great weekend of footy and hopefully you all (and me too) progress through to the next round of the finals!

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.