View Macca’s Maurauders’ Team
Round 15 Score: 2,049
Current Overall Ranking: 269
Trades Left: 0
Remaining Salary Cap: $13,000

Dear Maccas Maurauders,

Thank you for submitting your team.

At first glance, your team looks great with 22 players scoring for you in Round 15 & 3 non - scoring players in reserve. What’s more, you have both Gary Ablett & Matthew Pavlich to return in Round 16. However, you have gone out too hard, too early & you have already run out of trades with 7 rounds remaining.

Ideally, we should all be aiming to keep 1 trade up our sleeve for each round remaining. While this sounds great in theory, it is very easy to get caught up in the early season hype & waste valuable trades.

The temptation to trade early can be uncontrollable when we see other teams scoring 2000 plus in Rounds 1 - 10, while we battle on manfully with our scores around the 1800 mark. The key here is to stick to your long - term strategy & ignore your overall ranking. We must focus on making our own dreamteam the best it can be, rather than worrying about falling “too far back to catch the leaders”.

I’ve seen hundreds of dreamteams submitted for analysis this season & I can tell you that early season bolters don’t finish in the top 10 overall. The most successful teams stick to a long term strategy, hold their nerve by conserving valuable trades & then come home like a steam train.

In 2008, my dreamteam was ranked 26,546 after 5 rounds. I decided very early in the season that I would save my trades & focus on the eliminator (which started in Round 6). History shows that my team finished 19th overall last year, a massive turnaround from Round 5. What I found was that the longer the season went, the more I jumped up the rankings. My team kept improving, while the early bolters dropped away at a rate of knots. Teams that were scoring 2100 early in the season were scoring 1700 in Rounds 20 - 21, while I was scoring between 2100 - 2200 & gaining 400 - 500 points per week. The message here is to be patient.

Back to Maccas Maurauders. With no trades left & Dean Cox in your side, I’m afraid you have no choice but to live in hope that he returns sooner rather than later. For all the other teams with Dean Cox in your side & trades available, here are my thoughts on the most likely replacements:

    Aaron_Sandilands

  • Aaron Sandilands - Fremantle - $415,200 - I’m a massive fan of Sandilands (he’s been my 2nd ruck all year), but I’m concerned about his hamstring injury. If he is 100% fit then he is your man, but Fremantle will take a no risk policy with Sandi because they are no chance of playing finals.

 

  • Hamish McIntosh -  North Melbourne $360,300 - McIntosh is averaging 95 points per game, but I’d be very wary. McIntosh damaged his posterior cruciate ligament (PCL) last season & played only 14 games. The PCL is also known as the “ruckman’s curse” because it is very common amongst ruckman. With North Melbourne no chance of playing finals, any little niggling injury would see McIntosh put out to pasture in preparation for 2010.

 

  • Josh Fraser - Collingwood - $341,400 - Stay away. He has an ongoing PCL injury concern which may see him miss 1 or 2 of the remaining home & away matches.

 

  • Darren Jolly - Sydney - $348,800 - Jolly has averaged 92 over the past 5 weeks & he is a viable option. He carries a massive workload at the Swans which often translates into high dreamteam scores.

 

  • Drew Petrie - North Melbourne - $343,600 - Petrie has averaged 87 points per game over the season, but I prefer others. Personally, I think he is highly over rated as an AFL player.

 

  • Mitch Clark - Brisbane - $358,500 - The young man from East Fremantle has carried the Brisbane ruck stocks admirably in the absence of Jamie Charman & Matt Leuenberger due to injuries. Clark has always been very highly rated by the Lions, since they took him at pick 9 in the 2005 National Draft. The extra responsibility given to Clark this season resulted in a new star being born. With Clark playing a major role in Brisbane’s push for a top 4 spot & an average of 99 points per game over the last 8 weeks, Clark for me is an automatic selection.

 

  • Kurt Tippett - Adelaide - $327,200 - Tippett has had a breakout year in 2009 & has averaged 100 points per game over the past 5 weeks. The young man from Southport in Queensland is very much on the Gold Coast radar & I suspect he’ll also be on the radar of thousands of dreamteams this week! A word of caution though, he can be inconsistent.

Good luck!