The Thursday Scramble: Round 2

What a round we had. I swear the scores get bigger and bigger after round 1 each year. I remember when having a score of 2000 at any point in the season was an achievement.  But now if you don’t get 2000 you are behind the rest of the pack! Anyway, we have one round worth of data now so let’s use that to start making plans to better our teams in round 2!

So Things Didn’t go to Plan…. What Now?

Firstly, don’t panic. One snowflake does not make a bizzard.  We only have the one week of data, and matchups could have played a big part in your player’s score. Just think about it, when we look at scores at the end of the season and we say “this guy has only gone under 100 three times”, one of those times could be round 1.  Remember that Gawn had a quiet round 1 last year too and then had a great recovery. So don’t stress over what has happened in round 1 too much it will all even out. We have these guys on our team for their annual average and total points across the year, not their round 1 score.

With some of the premiums not having huge scores in round 1 this presents a heap of opportunity for us. Keep an eye on those that you know are good and just had a bad game for one reason or another. These are the guys that you want to be targetting to bring in over the coming weeks as your rookies and mid-pricers start to mature. The ideal way to do it is to trade a maxed out rookie for a fallen premium of course but sometimes the timing doesn’t match up perfectly.

Just remember the season isn’t over for you, this week is a whole new round and in AF you have your two trades to use. Use these wisely (we will talk about that in the next section). In Supercoach and RDT you should be holding your trades this week if you can. Remember in those two games we don’t see any prices change until after they have played their third game. So next week is the key week to make changes in those games.

Get the Rookies Right

The first few rounds of the season is predominantly where you want to be getting your rookies right. They are the key to your game. Your premiums will have ups and downs but mostly ups (hopefully) but cash generation is the key to all of these fantasy games and this is the time where we need to make sure we have them right, before the key rookies have had their big price increases.

So what you want to be doing this week is looking at which rookies you have and didn’t perform as those you might move on and look to bring in the ones that had the big scores in round 1 as those scores will stay in the rookie’s price cycle (and hence keep their break even low) for a few weeks yet which will help boost their prices.  Just beware that if they have a couple of low weeks in rounds 2 and 3 you may need to cut them loose soon after if they max out fast.  It is always a risk and you need to keep a close eye on the performance of your rookies.

In both RDT and SC, because the prices don’t change this week you can afford to have one more look at them. We have seen it in the past where a rookie has had a massive score in their first game and then flopped in their second (and vice versa) so two weeks of data is always better than just the one. Remember also, in those games you have the trade boost available so after round 2 you could use three trades if you have three fix ups you need to do.

What to look for in Round 2

It is in round 2 where we need to watch closely at the role changes we saw in round 1 to see if they have stuck. If the player has the same role two weeks in a row we can be fairly confident that they are going to do it again.  Similarly watch to see if that rookie has the same great role or if that premium that had a poor score gets back to their best or we see the same thing again this week. Until we get some trend data it is hard to make long term calls on what we should be doing.

Remember that you picked the premiums for a reason and the guys that are in a new club/role or are rookies and they are the ones to watch very closely.

Round 1, 2021…

Top scorer: Andrew McGrath (141)
Averaged 85 for season.

Plus…

Jack Steele (78)
Averaged 122

Touk Miller (68)
Averaged 122

It's a long season, remember that!#AFLFantasy

— Adam 'Warnie' Child (@WarnieDT) March 18, 2022

What Game Do You Play?

Just want to check in with you all to see which games you play?  I want to tailor some advice to what you all play so it can be as relevant as possible. If you can answer in the poll below it would help me out.

Things to Remember

• Check your rookies!  Make the adjustments you need to make.
• Remember the trading rules in SC have changed. Check them out for a refresher.
• Leagues start!  If your league didn’t start last week it is more than likely to start now.

Good luck for Round 2, remember this is a marthon not a sprint so there is plenty of time to go and plenty of time to make up those points.  A lot of teams are set to win a round and don’t have the cash generation rookies that you might have so don’t panic just yet, give it at least another week!