The Thursday Scramble: Round 13 – Bye Week 2

For those of you old enough to remember the ads, the slogan for a drink is apt for this week.  It is the Bye round you have when you aren’t having a Bye round (for you younger folk, google Claytons). With just the two teams the bye this week stuff is simple …. right?  Hell no, Time to Scramble!!

Bye Thoughts

So with just the Power and the Dockers missing this week we should be pretty set to field at least 22 players for the week if not even have some bench cover. We will be without some key Dockers like Ryan, Clark, Serong as well as guys like Sharp who has been scoring well and of course Fyfe.  From the Power side it is really Butters and we have been without Rozee on and off so no probs there and also those that have Horne-Francis will be without a player.

Now, our usual plans in this situation would be to trade a few of these guys out that have been underperforming and then bring other guys in that have had their bye. And if you are going to do that there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. However, what about holding them? Well with just the two teams on the bye this week, as I mentioned above, you should be able to comfortably field a team for this week without having to trade, hell we did it for 4 weeks earlier in the season when we had those mini byes with just two teams each week on their bye so why is this any different? Well the difference is that now we have some fattened up rookies to offload, some ‘premiums’ that we now have enough data on to know that they aren’t going to get any better and we have some guys that have got form in the bank that we now know means we need to get them in. So you could quite comfortably use these trades this week (in AF, but in SC and RDT you could be excused for not using your trades) on fixing up other problems that you have in your team and even preparing your team for the last two byes this week.

Let me just touch on that last point first.  What I mean here is rather than waiting that one more round to ditch a rookie from the last two bye rounds, use this week to ditch them early even if they have a bit of money to make and do your upgrade to someone from that first bye now. What this will do is take the pressure off those two rounds particularly if you get hit with an injury that you have to deal with.  For example, if something like a Matt Crouch injury happens next week when you need to do those trades to move on your rookies and get 18 on the park, you could be stuck and your plans could be a mess. So it helps to get ahead of the game where you can.

So on to some player thoughts for those guys on the byes.

Fyfe – A lot of coaches have been hanging out to move him on and see this as the perfect opportunity, and I don’t blame them one bit. He has a white team and then two orange teams to follow his bye so his scoring, which has been questionable at best, may not be great. But the key is that we should be unlikely to see him in a vest with a bit of luck since he has had this rest this week. But with someone like Fyfe who ‘can’ get you a great score, I would say you can hold him through the byes if it means you can move on other guys that aren’t as likely to get you at minimum 65-70 guaranteed. The tricky part is that there are still 12 teams to have a bye. My current plan would be to hold him through at least R14 and possibly R15 when there are more options available that won’t have a bye still and you can trade him to one of them.

Sharp – He has had some big scores and in AF his BE is now at 70 so if you were holding him for cash generation he is just about tapped out. So he is one that you can certainly move on unless you are planning to hold him as an M9 or something like that for the rest of the season. It will be hard to miss his consistently good scoring but if you can get him up to a premium scorer in another position even like a Zorko then it could be very worthwhile. This is one of those tough decisions where you don’t want to move on a good scorer but if they aren’t in your “final team” plans then when they are maxed out would be the time. You really just need to make sure you have a clear plan rather than unload someone that you will regret in a few weeks.

I guess what I am saying with these guys is, you can make equally good arguments on keeping them and trading them. Just make your plans and run with them.

Gee thanks Rookies for making things harder!

What a time of year for us to lose two of our better rookies to suspensions.  Whilst Reid hasn’t been busting out huge scores he has the potential for a big score and he also has been fairly consistent and we know what we get. With Darcy we have been getting some good scoring of late. And in a normal time of the season we wouldn’t mind too much. But now, (as I mentioned above) things like this make it harder for us to do our upgrading around the byes so we are forced to do these trades which may mean we won’t have enough cash to get to where we need.

Obviously though, these two guys need to be traded out because not only do they both have two week suspensions but they also have a bye coming up too. So they aren’t going to be any use to us over the byes.

TEAMS Announcement Alert

Just remember that we have a Monday game this week so we won’t get the teams til the weekend. Just another spanner to throw in the works on a bye weekend!

Things to Remember

• Don’t lose sight of the fact we are in the byes just because only two teams are missing this week.
• Plan plan and plan. Things are going to get harder in the next two weeks.
• Use bye planners wherever you can get them (Selby’s is fantastic)

Enjoy the round of 8 games. We will only have 6 for the next two weekends so enjoy the games while we have them.

While we are in the bye rounds, if you are looking for a bit of fun, tune into the Shiva Blast podcast for the annual song competition, it is heaps of fun and lots of laughs.   Catch you all next week!

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.