The Thursday Scramble Round 3: Early Bye Round 2

Bloody Hell! What is going on this season!  How much harder can this get.  Hamstrings left right and centre.  We have rookies to sort out, midpricers failing and premiums getting injured.  Time to Scramble!!

Hammy’s Ahoy!

What the hell is happening.  8 hamstrings and a couple of calves in 7 games over the weekend and the worst part is that there are some extremely popular players that are hurt.  Let’s have a chat firstly about what we can do and then a bit about what we should do.

Are they a must trade?

In the first instance, yes, the two premiums Petracca and Rozee are must trades given their value and the length of time that they are going to be missing.  Murdock not so much as he is only likely to be out for a couple of weeks. He is very much one you can hold as he doesn’t have a big value and should be back in hopefully 2-3 weeks and has a heap more money to make.

Petracca was going to be on the bye this week anyway, so I am sure you have all set up your teams to be able to cope with him not being available.  So it is certainly a play to hold if you have other big issues to deal with. But it isn’t one that I think you should be taking. Why you ask?  Well if you put this off to next week and we get another two premium injuries you are simply putting yourself further and further behind.  If you put off trading out Gulden last week then you probably find yourself now with three premiums to deal with.  However, the key with these guys is that their price won’t change this week, whereas, your dud mid pricers or rookies are likely to lose value.  So you need to balance this potential (not guaranteed) loss in value against the points you could earn by side swapping to other premiums.

Options

So, now we have established that the two premiums are the ones we want to trade, what do we do?  Well one of the options is to get one premium and then use the other trade to get any rookies that you may have missed.  Yes, this would leave a heap of cash in the bank for next week (when hopefully you don’t have any more injuries to deal with ) but of course it is likely to limit your scoring potential. However, it does help ensure your cash generation going forward and ultimately early cash generation is the key.
Am I going to tell you which way to go?  No, that is up to you.  What am I doing? I will be doing two premiums as I have all the key rookies that we need to have at this stage.  But what would I know, I don’t have a hat!

Who to pick?

Again, plenty of options, mostly they are in defence and the midfield.  Life would be much happier if we had already had the first round of position changes.  Because up forward, the options are more limited as there are no definite stand outs. The clear two choices that are going to be the most popular would be Dan Houston and Gryan Miers as as they come off their bye this week. But if you do have some DPP action then Nick Daicos is the other must have. My main criteria here is to replace the two guys with two keepers because Petracca and Rozee were players we had no intention of trading out. The other thing would be to try and get someone that has already had their early bye and with the teams that had that bye, it shouldn’t be too hard to pick someone from that group.

LATE NEWS!

As I’ve been writing this I’ve just seen the news about Jordan Dawson not playing this week with a calf injury (yes I know it will shock some of you that I don’t get up at 5am to write this and publish at 6am (although I am a 6:01 Baller on a Mon and Fri for those that know what that is)).
Anyway, enough rambling. Dawson out is another big issue for us this week. However, they were hoping that he would come up for the game tonight meaning he should be a good chance to be back next week when the Crows play at home v Freo so he has a full 7 day break.  So no need to trade.

Don’t get blinded by the light

Much like at the end of the season where we say you only need to worry about a players form against the two or three teams they have left, we need to consider that at this point of the season too and not get blinded by their scoring against some of the lesser teams or opponents they have played. One that I will mention here is Tristian Xerri. Now, don’t get me wrong, he is a good pick  but so far he has come up against Dante Visentini and Matt Flynn and this week will go up against Lachie Blakiston who has been giving up points also.  I just don’t want people thinking that they are going to go massive each week because they have done it in round 1 or 2.

We just need to consider who they have played so far and what they have done. Another case in point is Jack Lukusious who has been a popular pick up in Draft this week on the back of his big score on Sunday against the Bombers.  I reckon that Calvin could have kicked 2 or 3 in that forward line on the weekend.

So while we use the Scale of Hardness to look forward, it can also be a very beneficial tool to look backwards too at what has influenced the scores of a player thus far.

Things to Remember

• Whilst we have all these injuries to deal with we are also missing our Hawks, Swans, Dogs and Suns this week with a bye.
• It’s a long season. We have had some adversity here to start but things will get better…. won’t they?
• Make sure you have your trades planned out before tonights game starts. I know a number of people that got caught out last week with Gulden on the field and hadn’t traded yet.
• Those of you in West Australia, your Eagles are playing at 9:30am your time given the 12pm start time here in Adelaide v Port on Sunday.  So breakfast beers it is!!

Stick with it, don’t throw the toys out of the cot just because we have lost a few players, unless you are in draft and selected two of Gulden, Petracca or Rozee with your first two picks, and I know of some coaches in DT Shiva who did just that, and if that is the case then throw away!  We will get through these horrid bye rounds and be back to normal when you all come to Adelaide in round 5!!  Have a great weekend and I will see you for the Easter round 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.