The Thursday Scramble: Round 11

That was a round of two classes of players, you either had Grundy or Baz (Temu or real) as your VC/C or you didn’t. Outside of that the pickings were slim. But that is all in the past now.  It is Round 11 and that can only mean one thing…  Time to Scramble!!

It’s a Huge Round

This round has so many implications and things happening that we need to step back and look at what it all means.

Firstly, this is the last round before we get the next batch of DPP’s and if your team looks anything like mine, I am desperate for some!  The key one will be Max Holmes gaining defender status. We are also likely to see some of the rookies getting extra positions as well. This is exactly what we are going to need as we head into the bye period. Flexibility in that period is the key as remember, just because you have guys on the bench, they still only count like they normally do when someone on your field hasn’t played.

Secondly we have the Mid Season Draft coming up on Tuesday next week which will give us a number of new players to the game and in the case of someone like Richmond who are experiencing a heap of injuries they will be chomping at the bit to get their hands on some new fit players and they could find themselves playing really quick. Just remember last year’s mid season rookie for the Eagles was their top averaging fantasy player by the end of the year.

Lastly, we are about to hit the byes and after this week we will have 3 trades per week for the following 5 weeks. In AFL Fantasy this is fantastic, but in SuperCoach just beware that you have probably used a heap of trades by now and it is easy to go on a trading spree but we have limited trades so make sure you try and save a few for the inevitable late season injuries and resting.

Time to do the double?

There has been a lot of talk this week about doing a double downgrade this week. Whilst I am not against this as a strategy, you will still have three trades to use next week where you could do some downgrading. Remember, anyone you are trading in this week will have a bye still to come. Remember, each week you don’t bring in a premium you are potentially putting yourself one week behind the rest of the competition.

Part of what I am planning to do is to firstly minimise the bye that I am heavy in which in this case is round 12 but also it is a great opportunity to trade out the red dots and those players that are on the fringe and could be dropped at any time.  The boys talked about this on the Pintcast this week as well as the main show and it is so important. Going into the byes with more than one or two players that are at risk of not playing is a big risk on your part as injury, suspension and resting will still happen around this time and we need to make sure we have adequate players to play.

And while I speak of adequate players, we really mean that we want to maximise the number of premiums on field to the extent that it is ideal that we have 18 premiums each week or as close to it as we can get. We can hide those rookies. But if we don’t need to use them that is ideal.

When we get to the three trades before round 12 we can then look to downgrade rookies to guys that are playing that will make us some quick cash but the other thing we can do is shuffle the deck chairs a little (assuming your spread of byes is ok) and swap some R12 rookies to R12 premiums. At least then you will still have the premium for the rest of the bye weeks and they won’t be missing an upcoming one which will add value to your trades.  This is all predicated by you having a really solid squad of premiums to use in round 12 of course.

There is no such thing as a Sure Thing

We saw a couple of things this week that we should just keep a watching brief on.

Firstly we saw the Eagles deploy two taggers this week! No one had that on their bingo card that is for sure!  And worse still it was old mate Murdock that was tagging Whitfield.  So those that were relying on a soft kill as a C for Lachie were not happy. Why this concerns me is it may make other coaches think…. hey, perhaps we should tag that Lachie guy from the Giants a bit more often!

The other one was that a captain v the Bombers in the ruck is also not a sure thing. We have seen the Bomber Ruck curse a few times this year, what it will do is make Action Jackson a bit cheaper in coming weeks with his low score this week. But the fact that we aren’t seeing these big scores against a team that have a depleted ruck division is a bit of a concern.

Things to Remember

• Another week and another two games on the Friday night.
• With all these green dots these days make sure you have your looping plans sorted early. The later you leave your VC the harder it will be to be able to execute the loop.
• Carefully consider those trades so that we don’t get ourselves all tied up as we hit those byes.

There we have it.  We have made it to the last round before the byes.  Sorry if I have rambled a bit here, just had a lot of thoughts in the head and kind of blurted them all out.  The key message I want to get through is to make sure you have a plan and then stick to that plan. If you need to deviate for any reason (like an injury) then step back, take a breath, then analyse what you are going to do.

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.