Footy Tragic

These articles are getting harder and harder to write. Most people by this stage will be running low on trades, so the ol’ double trade where you downgrade one player and upgrade another is starting to become a lot harder to do. Over the next couple of weeks the Player of the Week articles are going to start casting an eye over some possible 2010 selections, because so many different teams will be looking at doing so many different things with their last few trades, which I assume most people are hovering around.

Hopefully your squad is nearing completion, so I’m going to have a look at someone who could finish off your midfield - this is especially relevant for Rich owners. Rich has been good this season, but is starting to leak cash, has been scoring around the 70’s consistently of late and has a high break even again this week (that’s if he even comes up after suffering a heavy knock last week). $294K isn’t a lot to spend on a midfielder, but hopefully you have a bit of cash up your sleeve.

As you scroll up the list of mids worth $300K, the one that really catches my eye not too far up the list is Brad Green. He’s priced at $339,200 and is on the way up. His form since coming back from a jaw injury has been pretty good, except for Queen’s Birthday against Collingwood.

Given that he’s one of Melbourne’s best ball users they’re always trying to get it into his hands and he appears to have made a move back to the midfield after playing a bit more forward when he was on the comeback trail. The midfield is where he scores his best points obviously, so this is a positive move for the run home.

I must admit, I worry a little bit about his durability. He’s quite literally never played a full season, however he has never missed huge chunks of the season, so hopefully he’s already missed his quota for the year (he missed four with the jaw and in a positive he’s actually never missed more than four in a season).

At this stage of the year as trades are running low you want to make sure that your guy is going to stay on the park. Even though it’s something to consider with Green, I think it’s only a small risk. His role is generally a bit more outside with McLean, McDonald, Jones etc. winning a lot of inside ball. This usually keeps him pretty clear of impact injuries (OK, the jaw was just one of those things…unlucky) so if he can avoid soft tissue injuries on the way home you’ll be laughing.

We’ve been talking about Robert Murphy (or is that Bob these days?) for a couple of weeks on our weekly video, as we anticipated his price drop. His season so far has been slowed by injury. He had a limited pre-season after some knee surgery and when he came back into the Bulldogs line up he was eased in slowly. This made for a couple of low scores to drive his price down (47 and 58).

His third game was the return to his point scoring form, with a 107 against Adelaide. His previous two scores meant that he plummeted over $30K anyway. The next week he was set for a monster score when he succumbed to a hamstring injury on 36 points before quarter time. There goes another $30K off his price.

First game back from injury and he was eased into a defensive role against Port in a game where the ball barely saw the Doggies back line, meaning he didn’t see too much of the ball himself - another $25K off his price. With two low scores already in his rolling average, the 100 he scored last week against North marked a return to form and still saw him leak a further $20K off his price, making him under $300K.

In total he has dropped $101,800 off his starting price and for the first time this season he actually has an achievable break even score, meaning he’s likely to start going up in price again.

Murphy has been a solid DT forward for a number of years now. 2005 was when he really burst onto the scene, averaging 82.5 for the year. He was looking in good touch in 2006 until a knee injury ended his season in Round 9. 2007 was also injury interrupted - generally the first year after a knee can be a bit slow for players, but 2008 provided his best output, averaging 89.2.

If all is alright with his body, then there’s no reason not expect something around the 90 mark in the run home. However, there is always an associated risk with players who have had limited pre-seasons, even by this stage of the year. Most of the time they’re pushing uphill all year. I take solace in the fact that the Bulldogs have a fantastic injury record this year and that they really know what they’re doing to get their players right (with that said, you might be looking to trade Gia out to get someone like Murphy this week).

A couple of very popular forwards went down on the weekend. As mentioned above Gia copped an injury on the weekend and he’ll be out for six, while Pav has the much more awkward time frame of 2-3. Pav is a line call whether to trade or not, but with Gia out for so long it’s a bit easier to move him on. If you’re trading out one of these two price tags, then you’ll save a lot of money by getting Murphy and he is a good chance to provide the same output as that injured pair. That money can be used elsewhere for another upgrade (because I’m sure everyone has HEAPS of trades left by now…right?)

To me Stanton is the cheapest elite mid that doesn’t carry much risk at $369,000. You could probably make a case for Daniel Cross at $345,600, but I’d like to see a bit more of his Darwin form before making that call (his specialty in years past has been his amazing ability to pull 40-50 point last quarter to salvage lower scores, but that’s not been so common this year). The reason I preface this with the lack of risk, is that I know there was a bit of talk on our video last week about Steven Salopek, who I would classify as an elite but I worry a bit about his durability (only once has he made it past 16 games in a season).

Stanton will always have a place in my heart after his second half of the year last year. He was super cheap when I jumped on and he blitzed for most of the run home, including an insane 174 in Round 15 against Brisbane. Stanton has a bit of a habit of really chopping when he scores big. I find that if you get a ton from Stanton you’re looking more at a score around 120. He can get tagged out of games, so these monster scores he can post importantly make up for his down weeks.

Fortunately for those looking for a cheap mid, he had three down weeks in a row just recently. I wouldn’t be too concerned about this as a long term thing. In fact, he had a run last year in Round 7-9 where he scored 44, 58 and 64. This season it’s been Round 8-10 that has seen him end up in the bargain bin with scores of 56, 73 and 77. He responded with a 123 and 94 to follow up those average scores, so he does break out of these slumps pretty well.

The thing I like about Stanton as a DT’er is that he’s not really damaging with his disposal, so even though he’s the Bombers #1 midfielder, he’s not a huge priority to cop a heavy tag. Some teams will even allow him to kick the ball a fair bit, because it’s more his run that will hurt teams. As long as they can restrict his run some teams would even be happy for him to rack up some disposals, since he’s prone to the odd skill error.

You’ll get the highs and lows with him, but at that price I’d be happy to take that, especially feeling pretty confident that he can make up for a 60 with a 140. As an example, this year he’s already scored 120+ in four games, but sub 80 in five.

Another massive benefit you get with Stanton is that he’s quite durable. He’s only missed two games in the last four seasons and certainly durability is something I want out of my players as the trade numbers start to get uneasily low.

It’s a weird time to be writing an article in the middle of lockout. I suppose writing on Didak is a little reactive and this easily could have been last weeks article. At the same time, the third most popular DT forward (Ziebell) didn’t have a broken leg back then, so I imagine there’s a few people looking to trade in the forwards once we get out of this lockout.

Didak had an interrupted start to the year, playing the first four games, but getting hurt against Brisbane. His 2-3 week injury stretched out to five, much to the agony of his owners, but he’s back now and looking good. This week he’s set to go up in price with a break even around the 60 mark, though mind you he is playing Sydney who aren’t the DT force field they once were, but you still never know if they bust out their old ways and completely negate someone like Dids.

If he does score high, then he’ll go up in price but you can rest assured that he’s back, baby! If he doesn’t score so well then he sticks close to his bottom out price (which is now) and you can justify his low score with the Sydney factor. It’s pretty much a win-win situation unless you’re worried that he may not find his form.

In 2008 he really had a break out DT year. I really do feel for those that took the punt on him this year after he burnt so many people so badly last year with his club suspension, but one man’s trash is another man’s treasure. His injury kept his score low and this has had a flow on effect in his price to the point where he has dropped $70K.

Granted, his two big scores this season have both been against Melbourne, you can feel confident enough that he’s good for an average around 95 if he stays on the park. His other scores have been a respectable 88, a 72 against Geelong (tough to score against them), then a 46 when he got injured and a 79 first game back from injury. These scores have all driven his price right down, but I don’t consider it a concern over his scoring potential, because all of those sub 80 scores have a logical explanation.

You can look at his numbers this year and easily point the other way. You could logically argue that maybe he’s not quite got it this year. That he’s only scored well against Melbourne, but I see that as a very pessimistic argument. For me, the glass is half full and circumstances have prevented Dids from going bang so far this year. The planets are aligning though…

If you’re like me and you were holding onto Chad, I hope (like me) that you also don’t own Drummond. Even though I was steadfast on holding Chad on last weeks video, I must admit some doubt starting creeping into my mind the more I thought about his return from injury last year.

Now don’t get me wrong, I would never trade just to cover 0’s. If I was getting particularly fragile in a position then I would look at it. The reason for all of this personal spiel is that I can picture a few teams eating donuts in their back line this week, or playing a couple too many rookies because you’ve had to bench injured guns.

Well, if you’re looking to rectify this I’d be strongly considering Sam Fisher. He’s well underpriced at $341K. Obviously to have dropped over $50K it’s fair to say his start to the season hasn’t been the best, but hasn’t been too bad. He’s had a couple of tons and three 90’s (including two 90’s in his past two games) but the important thing is that he started 2008 similarly before going bang in the second half of the year.

It was Round 14 where he started really picking up his pace and came home scoring five tons in his last nine games (that doesn’t count the three tons he scored from his three finals games). He’s not likely to pull down those monster scores considering he didn’t score 130+ last season and only two scores in the 120’s. What you do get from a Sam Fisher in form is fairly consistent scores in the 100-115 range.

Having held onto Cornes for a week, I know I’m starting to think that trading sideways to Fisher will be worth it. Sure, the extra trade would be nice, but five more weeks of a streaky rookie back will be very frustrating. Even if you don’t have Cornes and you’re just looking to upgrade one of those rookies to a keeper then you’ll struggle to find a cheaper option than Fisher. The only ones I’m seeing are the injury prone Ellis, old man with brittle job security Peter Burgoyne (yeah, I’ve got him), a couple of SuperCoach specialists with sketchy DT history in Gilbee and Newman and of course, Hodgey who I’ve written about previously. Fisher looks the safe option to me, because I see more risk with the others and just as much upside.

By the way, this article is also an attack on Toby, because he keeps winding me up about jinxing players, so I’ll keep writing about his Sainters (three and counting). Mind you, I don’t want to jinx them too much because after this week I’ll have all three of those guys, but if I’m going down I’ll take Toby’s premiership dreams with me.

Scott Thompson was my best pre season pick last year. I liked that at the start he was mildly unique, as far as premiums go anyway and that he returned a 99 average. I’m equally happy that I didn’t go for him again, because he started the season slowly and as it stands right now he’s $77K down from his starting price.

His recent form and Adelaide’s run home make him a pretty attractive proposition. For the immediate future he’s coming up against Essendon this week, who he has managed 4 tons in 7 games against, including a 137 and 112 last year.

Admittedly after that he has North Melbourne (who he performs only OK against) and Sydney (who he has struggled against). However, his break even is very low this week, so a monster score against Essendon would see him sky rocket in price. After that, I like his history against most of the rest of the teams he meets this season.

Even though he’s only had two tons this year, he’s had four scores in the 90’s, so he has been thereabouts. A couple of stinker scores have really driven his average and his price down. I suppose you have to be prepared for the odd 60 with Thommo. He can frustrate in that way, but he makes up for it with the odd 130.

Traditionally the knock on him as a DT’er is that he takes too many frees against, but I don’t think the stats really back this up. This year he’s only had 11 FA’s in 9 games. Last year it was 28 in 22. I mean, he’s above average in the category, but once again where he hurts he can make up for it. He takes a few FA’s because he tackles hard and if his desperation at the contest costs you a -3 now and then, just think of the +4’s that he gets you.

What I haven’t liked about his game this year is that he’s very much in the middle of Adelaide’s handball happy game plan. C’mon Thommo! +3 is better than +2 so get that ball on your shoe a bit more often, please. It’s a bit of a bummer, because you generally like your DT’ers to have a high kick:handball ratio, but his recent form minus the Brisbane game (who he struggled against last year too) suggests to me that even if he stays on the hands a bit too much he can still average 100 on the way home.

He’s ridiculously underpriced for a guy of his upside. At the end of the day he wasn’t one of the most expensive players at the start of the year for no reason. He’s only in about 7000 teams, so he’s pretty unique, but given that his price is about to soar I expect him to be a fair bit more popular by Friday night at 7:40pm.

For those of you lucky enough not to have started with Lance Franklin this year…well more specifically for those of you who haven’t traded him in yet, now is a great time to look at the superstar forward.

Buddy has had a pretty average start to the season. His average of 80.2 is about 20 points per week lower than what I was hoping for from him when I put him in my starting line-up. As always, someone’s trash can become someone elses treasure. That average has seen him drop $112,300 (he had gone down a little more, but marginally went up in price after a 94 last week).

His first half looked like he was on track for an absolute monster, but he faded out, which suggests the queries over his conditioning are still relevant. At the end of the day, you can cop second half fade outs if he’s scoring 60’s in the first half. It might be a bit frustrating, but at least he’ll put up decent scores with that sort of start.

Hawthorn have a pretty sweet run coming up. OK, so it looks like Bock will be back to take him on this week and if we’re to look at their history (granted, it was just one incredible game from Bock) you’d have to say the Chicken Man has Buddy’s measure.

While this week could potentially be a danger match-up for Buddy, consider this: I’m going to assume that most teams have Higgins, and that most of them have Higgins as a forward. This is the reason why I am writing about an underpriced forward for the second week in a row - you’d have to worry about the articles during the week about Higgins. Even if he does keep playing you’d think he’d be carefully managed and this could affect his scoring. I was hoping for him to be a keeper, but he might have to be a trade out now.

Consider that Buddy is a decent chance to outscore Higgins this week.  Consider that Buddy actually costs less than Higgins (at least for now!) and consider that Buddy is staring at Sydney, Brisbane, West Coast and the Bulldogs in his draw. He scored 5 tons in 7 games against those sides last year (incl. finals). Both non-tons came against West Coast.

If you already have Buddy, but you’re looking at trading out Higgins or maybe even Krakouer then consider Ryan O’Keefe (see last weeks article and this is absolutely the last chance to jump on his bandwagon) or Daniel Giansiracusa (who may pick up a few points left behind by Higgins).

Slightly risky this week, but I’m going to profile a guy who looked like a shadow of his former self for the first few rounds this season. After the news that he wanted a trade back to Melbourne and that a deal couldn’t be done I’m sure I wasn’t alone in thinking that ROK just wasn’t interested in playing for Sydney anymore.

It looks like his slow start to the season was merely misleading. Having played all of his career as a deceptively tall medium forward ROK trained this pre season with the midfield group. There was no evidence of an actual move to the midfield until the last few weeks.

With Michael O’Loughlin and Barry Hall having interrupted starts to their seasons ROK had to plug a hole in the forward line until they got back to fitness (http://www.foxsports.com.au/story/0,8659,25497353-5015864,00.html). With those two back in action O’Keefe has started seeing some of that midfield time and it looks good from a DT point of view.

MOL, BBBH and ROK have been in the same team from Round 6-8. I must admit, I didn’t see the Round 6 game, but from what I read it sounded like he saw a bit of midfield time and only scored 79. Nothing to slit your wrists over, but not quite fantastic. However, against Geelong on a day where Sydney got dominated he snagged a respectable 92 and followed it up last week against West Coast with a 110.

Now ROK has always been a consistently good DT scorer, averaging around 85-90 a season, which you’d take for your 6^th or 7^th forward. I like the sound of his move to the midfield and think it could at least see him average those sort of points for the rest of the season. The thing that makes his move particularly appealing is his tackle numbers over the past few weeks. In fact, the trend this season has been that his tackle numbers are way up and his goal and disposal numbers have been down.

The last few weeks have seen those disposal numbers go up again, but with all these tackles it should supplement his lack of goals (mind you, I’m sure the Swans wouldn’t be adverse to swinging him inside 50 for bursts). He only managed three tackles in his first two games, but since then he’s averaged 6.3 per game (or 25.3 DT points per game). 25 points on tackles means he only needs another 60 points from all the other stuff for a respectable score and I’m pretty confident he can more often than not manage 10 kicks, 10 handballs and a few marks. He’s a very, very smart player and this goes a long way to him just being able to find the right spots to get the ball.

OK, so you could’ve got him $15K cheaper before this week, but you really need to see a couple of good games in a row. And let’s face it, he’s not exactly breaking the bank at $327,700. Hindsight is a beautiful thing, but he was only $12K more expensive than Krakouer last week - would’ve been a lovely sideways trade! That’s the move I’m looking at this week though because Krakouer looks well and truly done with a break even score of 138 (while ROK is set to go way up with a break even of only 33).

I’m guessing by now everyone has holes everywhere, but given how common Rance is, I’m going to have a look at Jack Grimes this week. OK, now first of all, going Rance to Grimes would be a pretty ugly sideways trade, but depending on your trade situation it might make a bit of sense. Rance isn’t the only concern in the backline, so covering for 0’s might be high on the agenda this week.

Grimes is a good option for a couple of reasons. As I discussed on the selection video a couple of weeks ago, I’m not a big fan of trading guys in around the $200K price range, however value is value. Grimes is a natural ball magnet, has a game well suited to DT and plays in a position where the ball will be a lot - the Melbourne backline.

He was a huge ball winner in juniors, which is largely what you’d have to consider when looking at him given that he hasn’t played a heap of footy over the last couple of years. The good news is that he showed last week that he appears ready to translate his same game to AFL level. He’s not particularly noted for his disposal, but hey, for Dream Team I can live with that. A kick is still worth three points and any turnover means the ball is coming back to where he’s standing.

The Demons will be keen to get a lot of games into him, because leadership is something that was mentioned from the time he was drafted - certainly a player they’ll be building their future around, so job security shouldn’t be an issue if he can keep his body right. His injuries over the last couple of years have been back related, so we can only hope that he’s worked his way through them completely.

I can certainly see Rance to Grimes being a pretty popular move this week, given the timing of Rance’s injury and Grimes’ massive first game of 2009 (109 points). As I mentioned earlier, it’s a very sideways trade, which could be deemed a waste (conventional wisdom would say you either downgrade Rance to a rookie priced player or try and upgrade him to a keeper if you can spare the cash). It’s an ugly situation, but Rance was looking pretty close to maxing out in price at exactly $200,000. Grimes is pretty close, priced at $186,400, but he’s got a fair bit more scoring potential than what Rance had pre-injury anyway.

It wouldn’t be beyond comprehension for Grimes to go up about $100K and all going well if he gets to that point, he might give you enough cash for an upgrade to a keeper, or just turn out to be a handy reserve for your backline. Let’s face it, the backline isn’t exactly swimming with potential rookie trade-in targets (unless Matthew Broadbent makes his debut for Port soon - one to definitely keep an eye on!). So as reactive as trading Grimes in may look, I think he provides a bit of flexibility in what you can do with him for the rest of the year.

At the end of the day, if you’re in trouble with 0’s this week and your backline is a particularly pressing need AND you don’t have much cash, Grimes would make sense to trade in.

I was starting to get bored of writing about falling premiums, but let’s face it, there’s only two types of players you should be getting in by now. Premiums and cash cows. Those mid priced that I like are pretty well useless by now (by the way, the correct answers this year were Shaun Higgins, Nathan Krakouer and Sam Gilbert - great work if you had all three from the start!).

To start with, as some of you may noticed from the Live Scores page, I traded Lenny in last week. His average time on ground has been very low, hovering between 50-60% for his first three games. His scoring was respectable enough and as such he was leading the league in points per minute. Notably his scores weren’t high enough to drive his price up (in fact he went down about $20K) however he was showing signs of the Lenny we love. It’s just a matter of that TOG rising, which it has over the past couple of weeks - as have his DT scores.

His 130 against Port Adelaide looked good enough for me and I wasn’t too disappointed with his 100 against the Bulldogs when I brought him in. His break even last week was 85 if I recall correctly, so he only went up in price marginally this week. With an even lower break even score this week I can’t picture him being cheaper than he is right now.

Obviously any player you’re trading in at this price around this time will be someone you plan on keeping for the rest of the year, so if you think Hayes is a Top 6 midfielder for your team then now is definitely the time to jump on.

The thing I like about Hayes is that he racks up a lot of tackles, which are DT gold. Well, maybe not gold, because goals are better and that’s not something he’s particularly well known for. Apart from that he puts numbers in all of the columns and racks up plenty of touches.

The risk you take with him is probably injury related. He’s just that little bit older now and he plays a style of game that’s pretty high impact on the body (well, most of St.Kilda are this year!) so he might be susceptible to a bit of a niggle. He’s not been too bad on the injury front in the last couple of years after coming back from an ACL in 2006. In 2007 he missed three games and those who had him last year will recall the biggest tease of all time when he did his hammy just before quarter time against Freo on 75 points… 75 points before quarter time. Experts suggest he was definitely going to get the 300 he was on track for. He missed a game with that injury (well, one game and three quarters more specifically).

It is a risk/reward game though and I don’t think the risk on him is as big as the reward he could bring to your team. I’m on board and I know there’s a couple of DT captains out there considering what to do with Ablett (what to do with Ablett could be the topic of a thesis!) but if you do decide to trade him out, I’d have a look at Hayes. If you have enough trades in hand (I wouldn’t trade Ablett out with anything less than 14 remaining) Hayes could be a target that will average 100+ but at the same time leave you with plenty of cash to get Ablett back in the run home.