Dream Team Extra: Round 16

 

Another round of mini-carnage gone and most scraped through relatively unscathed. A few midfield guns did misfire though, resulting in a lower scoring range than the weekend before. But going by the commentary on DT Talk and the twatter, most of you coaches are going well and are starting to peak for the finals – great stuff!!

News-wise, the sky fell on our heads early on in the week with the wrong kind of Mad Monday (sorry to steal your trademark @RLGriffin85!). Unfortunately the carnage is set to continue this round with additional DT-relevant ‘outs’ on top of the suspended pair of Goddard and Martin. Read on for the weekly wrap of some misery, little bit of sunshine and a teary farewell to a favourite…

 

Breaking News

This morning, Knee-Jerker extraordinaire @adzman78 re-tweeted an SEN snip that Paddy Ryder might have copped a calf injury at training yesterday. Given the Bomber’s cagey tactics in naming Zaharakis (even though he tore his quad muscle in training) and then announcing his withdrawl at the last minute, I suggest you select a ruck EMG if you have Paddy starting on the paddock. Y’know, just in case…

 

Watered Down

This Monday night tweet from West Coast’s Communications Manager, Gary Stocks, was not the way we wanted the week to start…

So Waters has had his knee cleaned out and the early prognosis is 3-5 weeks. With Goddard out for another week, a missing Beau in our backline quiver will cause a fair bit of pain. Unlike Scotland’s miracle cure, I doubt Water’s will be back inside of 3 weeks, especially as the Eagles will want him right for the finals. Word on the Perth airwaves is that it could be up to six weeks! But can you hold if you’re running low on trades? Or are you pulling the trigger and swapping him out for another gun?

 

Definitely No-Buddy

Shortly after the Water’s bombshell came this beauty…

Yup, a double-whammy on Monday night with Franklin crossed off the Hawks’ selection list for 3 weeks. How’s that for a mangled forward line if you’ve got the Dust-Buddy combo? Well, here’s the official release on the Hawthorn site and the silver lining of the otherwise stinky turd of injured guns is this particular line: The Hawks are hopeful, however, that Franklin could make a return sooner rather than later. Let’s hope so, ‘cos I think we’ve borne through enough pain in the past 5 weeks!

 

The Cheap Heap

In his third game back from injury, Adam Goodes racked up 137 as his Swans steamrolled the Lions. He’s bottomed out at $369k this week and with a BE of 48, now is the time to jump on and ride the end-of-season specialist’s scores all the way home!

Another to keep an eye on is the soon-to-return Marc Murphy, who has rated himself an 80-85% chance to play tomorrow night against the Kangas. His BE for this week is 208 and with a projected drop of around $50k next week, he’ll be a sub-$400k pickup in a fortnight. He could arguably be the ‘Bargain Of 2012’, so big watch!!!

 

Grab A Bagful

Of Mark Baguley, that is. Essendon made this announcement yesterday:

As stats-guru @FantasyFreako tweeted soon after, Bags has averaged a healthy 84 ppg in the VFL this year. He’s a mature-aged WAFL recruit and at a very modest $85.8k, may be a handy DEF/MID DPP come finals time. Of course, watch him over the next couple of rounds, but there’s reason to be confident that he’ll play given Paul Hamilton (Bombers GM of Football Operations, which I guess is kind of a big deal at Windy Hill) going on record to say that they’d only elevate a rookie if they planned to play him that round.

 

Pendles Plays!

On a positive note, Scott Pendlebury should play this round after spending six weeks recovering from his leg fracture. He’s featured in the #DTExtra for weeks on end as speculation peaked heading into each Thursday’s team selection news, but this should be the last time he gets a mention in this write-up as long as he doesn’t break anything else in the remainder of the season (touch wood!).

 

Cheers Chooky!

Last and certainly not least, we bid a sad farewell to DT Talk blog originator and long-serving rookie expert @ChookDT. He’ll be hanging up his comb and returning to the roost to take care of his little chicks. While the grand old cock (and I mean that with the utmost respect) may be relinquishing his perennially popular Chook’s Rooks, there’s no doubt he’ll be omni-present in the twitterverse to share his non-caponised wisdom. The DT Talk community thanks you and salutes you Chooky – good luck and god speed!

 

 

Anyways, that’s the rub for this week. Trading? Heard any juicy news bits, gossip or rumours? Got a rant or a rave? Stick it in the comments and let’s get some healthy chatter going ahead of team lists tonight. See ya next Thursday for another bout of media trawling and good luck this weekend!

 

Any questions, suggestions, general chit-chat or requests for next week’s Extra?
Hit me up on the tweetvine: @TeeTeeDT