The Thursday Scramble: Round 6

Gather round came and went and it was (apart from the weather) a great success and it was bloody awesome catching up with some legends and meeting some new friends.  And we nearly escaped from the round with no forced trades, but alas, they came for us later in the week.  So…. Let’s Scramble.

Gather Round Recap

Great to see so many at the DTTalk catch up and to meet some new friends and also meet a few more people.  At that game on the Friday night I think just about everyone who is a part of the Fantasy community was at the game.  Hopefully we can do it all again next year even bigger and better!

One thing you do need to take into account when you are looking at your players and their scores from gather round is the rain and slippery conditions. Not everyone plays well in those conditions and some do a lot better due to the increased stoppages and tackles. I can’t believe that we had that much rain here last weekend, we haven’t had that much rain here in probably 9 months!  But just make sure you factor this in when you are looking at scores.

Bullets, Bullets and more Bullets

Can we get a week please that has no forced trades?  I mean, this is starting to get a little annoying and as it now stretches into round 6 we are starting to impinge on upgrade season. That is where it becomes a problem because as we will be, as Selby tells us correctly, you will be a week behind everyone else for every week you can’t upgrade and move on a fattened or deflating rookie.

Dev Robertson is one of the most annoying given that he still had plenty of money to make for us. Unfortunately a must trade. But, if you have other issues that you have to deal with you can leave him for another week. As we know with injured players, they aren’t going to change in value so you can deal with the active bullets and not the blanks.

Conor Budarick is another, but we know that he is about 3-4 (at last check) and that is too long to hold. Points on field or cash bubbling away are the keys to this game, so have no fear in trading him out. He has a BE of 60 in AFL Fantasy and in my mind he is just about tapped out in terms of cash so there isn’t really any reason to hold him.

Noah Anderson came at us mid week with the appendix surgery. This was out of the blue and here is one option where you can hold. The club and history tells us that this is likely 1-2 weeks out. But there are some mitigating factors if you do want to trade. Firstly, he hasn’t been putting up the big scores and whilst we say don’t trade your premiums at this time of year, you could justify this trade by arguing that you don’t know how long he will be out and we don’t know how he will go when he gets back. We know he won’t be running for a few days at least! It is going to come down to which rookie you need to bring on field to cover him if you decide to keep. And if you are going to hold, make sure one of your trades is a good upgrade otherwise you may as well have cashed in Noah and spent that cash.

On the way back we have Christian Petracca likely to be named tonight as being an in for the Suns.  I am sure most of you would have traded him out and there is no shame in getting him back in. We had no idea how long he would be missing. Having said that, I wouldn’t be surprised if they do give him one more week as they are playing the Bombers and should win comfortably (sorry Warnie). And even if he does play, I also won’t be surprised if he has his minutes managed as he comes back into the side.  So don’t expect a huge score from him if you do get him back in.

Don’t forget while you are upgrading

So if you are lucky enough to be able to do some upgrading this week and over the next couple of weeks. Make sure that you have the mid-season byes in your plans.  They start in round 12, and yes, I know that there are 6 rounds between today and that first bye round, but it will come up fast and the first of those weeks is one that you really want to plan for because we don’t really want to be trading people in that week who are going to be on a bye in the subsequent weeks unless they fit part of an overall plan.  In Supercoach, that is one week that we really don’t want to trade at all.

That week will have some relevant teams on the bye which is Adelaide, Gold Coast, North and Port.  We would all have at least 3-4 premiums from that group and if we go and start adding more you will weaken your squad for that round.  Now, you might say, well, that is a viable play, and absolutely it is. You could sacrifice that round to make yourself strong for the remaining ones. But really, we try to weight our rookies and mid pricers that we inevitably want to trade out towards the back end of the byes so we can trade them out before they reach their bye but after the first one so we can bring in a bye free player.

So, with all that said, my main message here is that we want to make sure that we have the byes and our bye plans in mind whilst we do our trades over the coming few weeks. It is too late if we get to the fortnight before the bye and you realise you are screwed.

Things to Remember

• FRIDAY NIGHT MADNESS! Be aware that on Friday night we have two games. The first one starts at 7:20pm EST and the second one starts at 7:50pm EST. Make sure you are ready and have your loops in place.
• Rookies are going to start getting tired. They may have started with a bang but they are likely to start to ease back in their scoring. So BE’s and Averages will start to converge quickly.
• Make sure you have read Fry’s rookies article. This is the time of year we are going to start looking for downgrades which are going to start becoming thin.

So with the excitement of gather round behind us we can start to settle in to regular transmission. Have a great weekend and I’ll catch you all again 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.