The Thursday Scramble: Round 4

Have you enjoyed the early bye rounds? The ability to drop some poor scores from your round? Well this is our last crack at it for a while with the Bombers and Hawks missing from this week. But we are starting to see some of our rookies and midfielders run out of steam, so that can only mean one thing…. time to Scramble!

Hold em or Fold em

Well our first bit of concern dropped last night when we saw that Lucas Camporeale wasn’t in the Carlton side yet again this week but to make it even worse he isn’t an emergency. He is sitting there now on our benches with a BE of 7 in AF, -42 in RDT and -44 in SuperCoach given he hasn’t had a price movement in those last two games. Nothing worse than having a rookie stalled with a great BE but just can’t get on the ground to cash in on it.  So what do we do? Again this is going to really depend on where you can get to from his cost. The issue is that you are really just sideswapping to another rookie.  Now, you are in luck because this is really the last time you can do that because after this week you really want to be doing your upgrading. He could be the perfect candidate to trade to a Christian Moraes. The longer that we hold him then this will make it harder to move him on if he doesn’t get another game as the number of new rookies will diminish as the weeks go by.

Then we head to the other end of the scale with a Jason Horne-Francis. We all know that he hasn’t been performing to what we thought he could do. And it isn’t as if this happened over the off season, he was on fire in the preseason and looked a million bucks! Is it just the poor start to the year for the Power, is it just that Butters is missing or is it something else. The difference between him and one of these rookies is that we know he isn’t going to get dropped and the form hasn’t left him altogether (just take that opening goal in the last quarter last week and the way he salvaged something of a score in that quarter). By side swapping JHF at this stage of the game you could be setting yourself back even if you do gain a few points while he finds that form again. You really need to be getting in the best cash generators you can. Remember, you didn’t start with JHF because you wanted to make money from him, he was a keeper, so what his BE or what his value does is entirely irrelevant. You got him to stick to the end and personally I would be sticking with him until all my rookies and mid pricers on field have been upgraded fully and then I would set about looking to move him if he is still underperforming.

Preparation for Round 5

With this being the last of our best 18 rounds for a while you now need to make sure that your team is best placed to be best 22 in Round 5, gather round in Adelaide. You will need to make sure that you are minimising your red dots and that you have the best possible options on your field. By next week every team would have played 4 games and along with that most players also. So by this time we should be in a place to be able to have a more educated guess as to which rookies to put on field and which not to. So overall your team and its scoring should be improving.

Add to that we are already seeing some of our rookies starting to reach their max price, remember this can happen all of a sudden. One poor game or a vest will kill their cash generation so you will need to be ready to pull the trigger well before you thought you might have to.  Take Xavier Lindsay for example, we thought he would be in our teams for weeks to come but now he is very much in the trade out conversation if he doesn’t get named tonight.

Things to Remember

• Check your team and check it again before lockouts. Someone who shall remain nameless (maybe the author of this article) may have swapped Stone off field for Sanders in Real Dreamteam and forgot that Stone was his looping Captain from the week before and got stuck with Sanders as his C in that format.  Thankfully he didn’t have a complete shocker, but if I can do it then anyone can if they are distracted enough and don’t check.  Let my embarrassment be a lesson for everyone.
• Keep looking at the rookies and articles from Fry to make sure you are getting the best you can get in that space.
• Follow the Pirate as he seems to have it all together this year (so far) but he is hitting some 6’s so listen when the man speaks.

Have a great weekend everyone and if you are coming to Adelaide next week enjoy yourself, there is plenty to see and do (don’t listen to the haters). Otherwise, hopefully your team goes well this week and you are positioned beautifully for best 22 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.