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The Thursday Scramble

The Thursday Scramble: Round 19

Last week before finals! Last chance to Scramble to those top 8 spots!

Here we are, last week of the regular season, are you in the finals? Or are you just playing for pride now?  Which ever the case is, don’t give up!  The next 5 weeks are when you can make up a heap of ground in the rankings. There would be plenty of ghost ship teams out there at the moment with people that have given up and you can now rocket past them and give yourself something to aim for next season by finishing as high as you can!  Now, Let’s Scramble!!

#AskDunny

I put it out to you this week to see what you wanted me to cover as we are so close to the end of the season I was sure you would all have some great questions and how right I was!

Nice one Alex, one most of us have pondered at some stage or another!  But sadly at this stage it is just two trades at a time.  Good luck mate and hopefully you get through the finals!!

Not game enough to predict this one Brodie, I stuffed up when I said not to bring him in earlier in the season!  Realistically you would have to expect his points would drop when Grundy comes back in as he won’t have that number 1 ruck role to himself and will find himself spending more time up forward, so his points should reduce but by how much?  Anyone’s guess!

Interesting one Isaac.  There is that old saying that you have to “Risk it for the Biscuit” and playing a straight bat and bringing in players that are common to the teams above you won’t see you rise in the ranks. You need some POD’s.  Now if the rest of your team has som POD’s in it then you are making a good trade here.  I really like the In’s you have listed as Marshall should have a great run home if it is indeed true that Paddy Ryder will miss much of the rest of the year. His scoring should be great.  And I like Steele who has had a great run since he returned from his injury period. So both of those guys are great additions to your team.  With the Out’s, well unfortunately our Pig Titch is not performing and you must trade him out as he isn’t getting the role that saw him earn his snout!  With Cameron, as I said above, I find his game hard to predict but if Grundy returns he surely can’t keep up that level of scoring if he get’s shoved to second ruck with more time up forward.
So in summary, you need some points of difference to get up to that top 100 from where you are but you also don’t want to go too wild and these guys may not be in a heap of teams ahead of you given Steele was traded out when he got injured and some coaches may not have had a way to get him back in.

Another great question John! Any team with 30 green dots at this stage of the season is having a great year and has most certainly been kissed!  If you are like most teams you are struggling for bench cover. I like to have at least one heartbeat on each line to give me some cover. And the more DPP players you can have on your benches (playing and non-playing) the better. Why the non-playing you ask? Well it doesn’t matter if some aren’t playing because they are the ones that allow you to swing your best cover possible to other lines. And it may mean that you swing a premium around to put on field and have your weaker player moved to another line on the bench. I am sure you are all well across this by now and are experts at it!

But if you can have a guy that is going to get you at least a 50 on each line on your bench then you are doing really well.  That is what I generally aim for.

Good one Millar Time!  The standard of players has most certianly risen in the last couple of years and it really is a credit to the level of player in the game and also the quality content that comes from guys like the Traders and Selby each week. It is getting harder and harder to finish up the top and get anywhere near a hat let alone the car! All I can say is I am doing my bit for you this year mate and languishing lower than I would like to be in AF.

I think I will leave this one to Calvin and Roy to rank the Smugness players!  I have a feeling that the boss (aka Warnie) might sack me if I try do the rankings!!

DTTalk Live!!

Great to see so many Legends at the Highway last night and to catch up with some of you that I haven’t seen in ages!  And the best bit is we get to do it all again tonight!

For those of you in Perth that can still get tickets to the show that isn’t sold out, as Molly Meldrum would say “Do yourself a favour” and get along to see Roy, Warnie and Calvin and have a heap of laughs and a few beers with the boys.

Last round before Finals!

I think I have told you over the last couple of weeks my thoughts on what you should be doing to make the finals. But really as I mentioned in one of the answers above, you are generally not going to climb the rankings or your league ladder if you just match everyone else. So you may want to think a bit left field, use the Scale of Hardness, and bring in someone that has a great run over the next few weeks and that should really help boost your scoring and also allow you to go deep into finals!

If you are locked into the finals and aren’t worried about rank, you could use this week to double downgrade in order to pull off a couple of big upgrades next week to really give yourself a strong chance in the finals. This can be risky because we don’t know what injuries you may cop this weekend that would give forced trades, but if you have two bench guys that have made some money and aren’t playing, trading them down to a bargain basement rookie that is playing not only makes you money but also provides you with a heartbeat that you may otherwise not have had. This is of course only a good strategy if you are solid with your position in your league and you don’t have any other issues to deal with on field.

Things to Remember

  • Go for Glory! No one remembers Second Place (unless you get cash for second) Make a move on your opponent
  • Use Cal’s Scale of Hardness! It is a critical research tool as the number of games remaining gets less and less
  • Use your trades strategically as I have mentioned above.

Hope everyone at the Highway last night had a great time and as I said, looking forward to seeing more mates tonight! Have a great last round of the regular season and I will see you all next week as we head into the first week of finals!!

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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.




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