The Thursday Scramble: Round 19

Wow, I know we always say there can be some carnage and we need to be prepared, but bloody hell, what were the Fantasy Gods trying to do to us this week!  Short term injuries, long term injuries and suspensions!  Is there anything else we can be forced to endure?  I bloody hope not! Let’s Scramble!

Don’t say I didn’t warn you….

I’ve lost count of the amount of times that I have told you that we need to be prepared for problems to arise during the round and those luxury ‘in and out’ trades that you were planning to take advantage of a good matchup might just need to be permanent.

Well that is what we are faced with this week thanks to the sheer volume of things that have happened.  So it all comes down to priorities and where you are going to get the best bang for your buck.

Must Trades

Nic Martin is the most obvious of the must trades this week. Confirmed ACL means that we won’t see him til this time next season so no choices here

Tristan Xerri  is another that is a must trade with there only being 6 games left and a 3 game suspension means you are missing him for half of the remaining games and you are unlikely to have cover that you can afford to use (i.e. Jackson in the forward line could be moved to the rucks but I doubt you have anything on the forward bench that will do the job of replacing those points).

Jason Horne-Francis reportedly played the second half with a busted foot. If that is how he is going to play with a busted foot I might just bust it each week for him!  He won the game for Port, no question about that. But, what do we do with him.   He hasn’t had the scoring we have wanted since he has come back from that injury and interestingly I did spot him standing in the goal square at the opening bounce of the game rather than in the midfield. I simply wonder if that means he was still having issue with that shoulder or something else. So the problem is that his value is so low you can’t do a great deal with him which sucks. With that you should probably trade the other two first if you have all three of these guys to get some blokes with plenty of cash on their heads.

Probably going to need to hold

Connor Rozee is the one that I am really unsure of here. He is highly unlikely to be on the team sheet when we see it tonight but is it going to be just the one week? This is the big question. He should be back after one or two at the most so he is the one you hold. You are probably having bigger fish to fry.

So what’s our best plan?

I am going to have to use that phrase that seems to be a real favourite with people today and that is, “it is going to be very team dependant”.  And this is literally always going to be the case with any advice you hear in a podcast or see on the internet.  Unless you have the exact same team as the people giving the advice as to what they are doing it may not be the right advice for you.

Obviously you are going to be trading these guys out but try and do it in such a way that you can manipulate your team using DPP so that there is half decent bench cover on the line where you have to stash one of the guys you can’t trade.  If you are lucky enough to have two players on that line on the bench that are actually playing you can play the loop game (depending on when they are all playing of course) so that should help you at least reduce the impact of the bloke you can’t trade.

The obvious play for those with Xerri is to go to Grundy or Gawn and then with Martin thanks to DPP you can get a defender or a forward hopefully with the cash left over.

There are going to be alternate strategies which involve using Jackson if you have him by swinging him to ruck then getting other players.  One of the options I have (as an owner of all four guys above) is to move Jackson and then bring in Whitfield and Macrae. I don’t have much in the bank so unfortunately Grundy isn’t an option for me. There is no right or wrong answer, and whatever you do will probably be different to other teams and this could be a good thing as it could just be the combination that works!

There are going to be some funky lineups out there this week, for example I am going to probably have to have a couple of Moir, Zak Johnson and Tom McCarthy on field which isn’t ideal

My main piece of advice is simply get the best players you can afford that you think are going to score you the most from now until the end of the season.

Things to Remember

• Just 6 rounds remaining so in a standard league there is only two more rounds before finals!
• The Gold Coast v Essendon “Catch Up Game” won’t count. So don’t go loading up on those guys thinking they have an extra game.  They won’ count for Fantasy.
• There will be more carnage, you can count on it.  So if you’ve been hit this time and someone else hasn’t, it is a big chance this will turn around at some point so don’t give up!

Well I do always wish you all the best of luck and this week we are all going to need it! Let’s hope that for those with more than two of the guys missing for the rest of the year that nothing else happens and you can deal with the left over problems next week.  See you all 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.