The Plus Four: Round 15

We’re through the 15th round of 2010. Only 3 more roster games until we start the final series. Do what you can to be in the top half… noone wants to win the Tit-ed Cup!

THE BARLOW TRADE

We all would have clicked the “T” button on Friday (unless you are an impulsive trader and did it earlier) to get rid of Michael Barlow. For most, it was just to trade in a similar priced gun. Montagna, Ablett, Bartel and Boyd were the gimmie picks there and most would be happy. Some went with the DPP in Chapman and Goddard (don’t start). As a Dane Swan owner, I was happy that you needed a fair bit of extra cash to get on him. He is a bloody jet! Team Swan is much better than Team Ablett!

WARNE DAWGS TRADING CURSE

Ok… for those who followed what I did this week with my Barlow trade, hope you’ve had some fun laughing at my expense. For those who don’t know, I traded in Brendan Goddard for Barlow into my midfield. “Oh yeah, great call… gives me a MID/DEF dual position link. Don’t have to put up with playing against Goddard each week”… blah, blah, blah! For fucks sake. Can I not get anything right. Out with the flu. That sucks arse. I have no mid cover at the moment (Gysberts, Shuey) but had Webberley playing in my backline. So, I could have had Goddard in my backs and subbed Hodgey into my mids and if Goddard was out, Webberley could have taken his spot. FMDT.

So the curse. My last three players I have got into my team have included Colin Sylvia (played 1, missed the next 3), Ryan Hargrave (played 1, missed the next 2) and Jordan Gysberts (played 1, hasn’t played since). I’m having a bad run. I only have 4 trades left now, so if I do use those, I’ll give you a heads up so you don’t make the same mistakes!

THREE LEAGUE ROSTER GAMES TO GO

I played against my good mate Pokey this week. His team the Pokestars has over performed this year. Must have read this website in the pre-season and gone against all of the advice I gave out! I was pretty lucky in the end. He had Goddard just like me, but in his backline… where he had Ricky Henderson on his bench who smashed out 119. He called me on Saturday night accusing me of hacking his team as he forgot to click the ‘E’ in him (he still had that up his sleeve too). Damn. Unlucky Pokey, could have gone down to the wire! I’m now in the top 4 baby! Ohhh yeah! Here come the Dawgs!

AFL DREAM TEAM STRUCTURE IN 2011

There’s been a bit of talk about how AFL Dream Team will look in 2011 with the inclusion of Gold Coast and with it, and uneven roster that will include byes. It sounds like Virtual Sports will look at a simple solution, which I am certainly in favour of. That would be just to add more trades (24 could be the magic number for the 24 round season) and extend our bench. I am sick of hearing these friggen ridiculous ideas of supplementary trades where you can temporarily swap players for the week, or take a players average. With increased trades and extra bench, the hardcore fans can look at new strategy to play the game and it will keep the ‘regular’ punters involved for longer without DT ruining their lives as well!

95% of people play the game for the fun of the league matches. That has to be a priority when coming up with the solution for the ‘one off’ 2011 season. A preferred structure of the season by the AFL is to have 22 normal 8 game rounds (with one bye each week) and two rounds which would have 5 and 7 byes respectively. These would be ‘bye’ rounds in league games (like NRL DT). If they go with 19 normal rounds and 5 rounds with 3 byes each week, things might be a little different for DT.

Let’s face it, the AFL (and people who host other fantasy games) don’t want you to have to spend hours on it each week. People want to be able to look at it simply. If you think this might make it ‘too easy’ or whatever, then make sure you give us all a ride in your Toyota next year when you win it!

There will be more about this later in the season!

DT TALK EPISODE BEING FILMED TONIGHT

We will be getting away from writing our damn school reports for a few minutes tonight to bring you a brand spanking new episode of DT TALK. We have a special guest in the studio this week – m0nty from FanFooty.com.au. Make sure you tune in tomorrow to hear from the great man and also the regular DT TALK rubbish that we speak!

That’s all I’ve got this week… I better get back to writing school reports (I could write about DT all day – maybe I should run a Dream Team class next year?!). Enjoy your Monday everybody!