The Thursday Scramble: Round 9

Some great games of footy last week and unfortunately my Power were on the losing end of one of them, but we aren’t here to talk about real footy, we only care about those Fantasy points!  The Byes are coming and we are starting to see some banged up players and resting is a concern too!  Time to Scramble!!

T-3 weeks to go

Just three rounds of footy left before we hit that dreaded R12 bye. So that means you have 9 trades between now and then (remembering you will get three trades as we lead into R12). The other thing that happens then is we also get the next group of DPP’s which will be critical and it will hopefully unlock plenty of moves for you over the bye period.

With the byes, remember every trade you use of those 9 leading up to the first bounce in round 12, all of them will have a bye coming up. But it is all about balancing your bye players to make sure you have enough each week to put up a score. So having 18 is the key. Now you may look at your squad and go, yup, I have plenty of players each week. But be realistic and honest with yourself, because you know that not all of those guys are going to be playing. If you are counting rookies like Blamires or Tsatas or even a Jaques, we have already seen these guys get rested/dropped so ideally when you are doing your math on how many you have, I always do my counting and exclude them.

So what happens if you are heavy in one week? Well there is a second way you could go which is to go all in on that bye round and basically tank it and then be strong in the others. But when you strip that plan back, you would really need to have 18 premiums each week in those other bye weeks to make it worthwhile because your competitors are probably going to have 12-14 in each of those weeks and if they play like we normally see then they will be getting stronger week after week.  In some of the weeks you may have 20 or 21 premiums (depending on your definition of a premium) and in that case, two or three of them are going to be wasted which will lessen the benefits you are getting by bottoming out in one of the weeks.

Now I also want to say here that there will be one week at least where you will have a poor score but the aim is to make it not too bad so that you can still put up a semi-competitive score.

Just because a premium has fallen in value or is cheap doesn’t mean we have to pick them.

We are always looking for value. But sometimes we get blinded by a name. If you are considering someone that is falling in value make sure that you are fully aware of why their value has fallen and also whether you think it can be turned around again. Is their price falling because of one bad game where they had an injury? Were they ‘in game rested’ because the game was done early, is it because of a role change or is it because of poor form and they just aren’t hitting what we think they can do.

If we look at someone like McCluggage who has become cheap, we know he had an injury and was being nursed through games during the early part of his return so he is one that is good to go, but on the other hand we have someone like Noah Anderson, and we know that he has quite simply not been putting up the scores so he is one that we would steer clear of. Look at what their recent scores and time on ground percentages have been. This should help guide you as to whether they are simply just not going to score or if it is a blip and they will be fine.

Also don’t be afraid to play the break even game.  Some of these guys with BE’s up around the 90-110 kind of mark may go up in value after this week if they play well but it won’t be a heap so you won’t get burnt.

I guess here, we just need to make sure that we do our due diligence as to why the player has become cheap. Nothing worse than getting in a premium only for them to deliver you 80s and 90s.

The role change that I have a close eye on at the moment is that of Gawn spending time up forward. Hopefully this was a bit of a one off because when the game was on the line they did put him back on the ball but Max Heath seems to be popular at Demon land so just be careful there.

Things to Remember

• We have another double header on Friday night with the Lions/Blues at 7:30 EST and the Power/Dogs at 8:10 EST so make sure your team is set and loops are done.
• If you don’t have anyone that is enticing you as an upgrade you could do a double down but remember what Selby tells us and that is a move like that can put you a week behind the rest of the competition.
• Time to go Toddles! Calvin has lost patience and the rest of us have too.

Have another great round of footy and make sure you have one eye on those byes when you are making your trades.  The Giants backs and mids do look very attractive with that R13 bye.  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.