The Thursday Scramble: Round 9

What a weekend, some big scores, some big wins and some great finishes, the round of footy had it all.  But, did your Fantasy teams ride the crest of the wave along with you?  Whether it did or didn’t it is always time to Scramble!

Do I sell the farm only to get exhausted?

All the talk this week has been about how do we get Max Gawn into the side.  But, the better question to ask is should we be getting Max Gawn into our sides this week?

Now that seems ridiculous right, the bloke has just put up the biggest score of the year and you are saying we shouldn’t get him in?  Lunacy! But hear me out, as there is some method to my logic. As the old saying goes, (for those that remember the Jock Reynolds community) “Man who chase car get exhausted” meaning that chasing the points can be a fruitless exercise.  Bringing in Max this week doesn’t get you last week’s points. They are gone and as Selby would say, you are bringing in a player for what you think they can average for the rest of the season, not what they have averaged so far and this is very true indeed. With that big score last week we have seen his price rise by $75k in AF in one week. So you are paying more than those that got him in a week or two ago already which puts you behind.  Add to that the fact that he has just had two of the easiest matchups for rucks in the game against Nank who gives up points like Trump hands out tariffs and he then went up against the struggling Eagles and old mate Flynny.  So hardly the matchup that is going to make him lose sleep. He now comes up against Meek, Big O and Grundy in the next three. So will he have a massive score again, probably not.

Now you may be saying, but I just wanna get Max!  And that is perfectly fine.  However, he is going to rise again in value for a few weeks with this score in his cycle, and then (unless we see a couple more monster scores) it is going to come crashing back down again, right around the byes.

So I would say that a play that is just as valid is to look for the value of someone that has bottomed out and not someone that is on the rise. You will thank yourself later that you kept all those dollars in the bank to use down the track. Will you see some great scores from him? Yes, will you see some low ones, possibly, but remember you aren’t missing the entire score, it is only the difference between his score and whatever the person you bring in instead scores.

All I want you to think about is are you getting him in for what he is going to do or what he did.  The same goes for any player.  Just think of the opposite situation where you have held a player with a bad score because you know that over the course of the season it all evens out generally, same goes for a massive score. There will be some low ones to offset it.

This episode of the Scramble is brought to you by the number 6

What are you on about you may ask?  Well 6 is the number of trades you have left to use before we hit the first week of the byes in round 12. And as if we haven’t had enough bye rounds this year, we hit a block of 5 weeks with byes, yes, you read right 5.  Now before you start to moan and complain about it, just think about what that means.  In the past we had three weeks of byes with six teams on the bye each week. This year we have a structure of  4, 2, 4, 4 teams on the bye each week. This should (and I say should) make things a bit easier with more players to choose from each week for our best 18 rounds.

So as we use these next 6 trades I would highly recommend you use a bye planner or at least click on the bye link on your team page (because you are all good coaches and have the assistant coach package) to see how you are structured up.

Should you make a trade in or out decision solely on the bye status of a player? No, definitely not, but it should certainly be one of the deciding factors for the decisions that you make from here on out. And the closer we get the more important that decision becomes and the weighting of that bye status grows.

Things to Remember

• Consult the Scale of Hardness, I can’t stress this enough particularly with the Max situation outlined above.
• Have a forward trading plan as best you can. We want to get rookies off the field and as soon as we can.
• When you are playing the break even game it works both ways. That 2 from Trainor is nearly out of his cycle and cash gen will resume for those brave enough to hold him.

Have a great weekend of footy and which ever way your trades go, just make sure you have thought about them from every angle and you are comfortable with them. Again, nothing wrong with getting Max in, but just know you are buying him with that big score behind him and he is no guarantee to get it again.

See you all next Thursday.

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.