Footy Tragic

Friday:

Carlton vs St.Kilda:

Definitely a contender for game of the year had me on the edge of my seat all night! And as has been the case all season, the Saints won whilst holding Carlton to minimum disposals, meaning that no Blue scored over 100 points! Not good news at all for those who loaded up on the “fab-four”! However, if you loaded up on the Saints players this year, you were laughing! Saints’ “fab-four”, Montagna, Hayes, DalSanto and Goddard all scored well over 100 each, with all of them in peak career form. Do not be scared to jump on any of these boys – especially Montagna or Hayes, both of whom have been in consistent form all season and are capable of breaking hard tags. Also worth celebrating was the return from injury of Sam Gilbert, playing cleanly off half-back in his 50^th game – it will be interesting to see if he continues to play defence or moves up the ground like in the pre-season. Those of you who own Sam Fisher would have been very excited seeing him line up on the wing in the first quarter, only for him to be tagged out of the match… hopefully this position is a sign of things to come!

Get on: Leigh Montagna – in the same week that he firmed as third favourite for the brownlow, we can also confirm he has become DT-elite. He is racking up the possessions and LOVES to kick! Not handball!!

Get off: Jarryn Geary – the youngest member of the Saints side played only 59% game time for no effect – do not be surprised to see him rested like last year for a player such as Armitage.

Injury: Chris Judd – Broke his nose on Jordan Bannister and continued to play, although continuously coming off with the blood rule. Should be able to play next round. 

Saturday:

Western Bulldogs vs. Port Adelaide:

An absolute domination by Western Bulldogs not only showed that they’re a flag contender, but also that their team is full of DT stars. Best of all was Daniel Cross who played his best game this year – in years gone by he has been one of the DT elite midfielders, but has dropped off early this year… however, keep an eye on him – if this game wasn’t just a flash in the pan, he is a bargain for under $350,000! For Port, the star was Kane Cornes – the perfect example of a player who plays for your Dream Team – he gets the ball so easily from everywhere on the ground, and seems to be involved in every bit of play his team makes! He bottomed out last week, but his price is still reasonable! Also, as I mentioned last week, Callan Ward looks like a future star, so put him on your 2010 DT list! Interestingly, Robert Murphy was played as a backman, causing a poor 48 points. This is not good if Eade plans to keep him here – although I doubt it! In fact, for those who don’t own Murph, this could be a blessing in disguise! As is turns out, Eade needs a 7^th forward (to upgrade from Sidebottom), but doesn’t have much cash in the bank, so he plans to play Murph into some form in defence (whilst seeing his price drop immensely) before he snaps him up in 3 weeks for dirt cheap (and after he has been moved back into the forward line to average 100 points a week!) You’re a genius Rocket Eade!!

Get on: Kane Cornes – he is back into his ball-winning form and his team has a good run home. He could even turn into a great Captain option in a few weeks once we are sure about his consistency!

Get off: Danyle Pearce – I have been a fan of him this year – when he is not being tagged! But unfortunately he just doesn’t cope when someone sits on him! Therefore he is unreliable, and unreliable players don’t deserve a spot in your team!

Injury: Nothing to note. 

Richmond vs West Coast: 

Phew… Rawlings hasn’t dismissed Terry’s high possession game, and in the process has taken the Tigers to their second win of the season! He already looks to be getting more out of players such as Tambling and Mitch Morton (although I would still be too scared to put either into my team!), and has done some good things such as blooding the kids and keeping Deledio in the midfield (“Thank God!” cry his owners!) which should see some better scores from him! On the other side were the Eagles, who didn’t look 100% committed to the cause – they have been terrible when travelling this year – with Matt Priddis again being their best player! He also looks to have worked on his disposal a bit, making him a much more damaging player than in years past. He is a great DT player with immense tackle counts, and knows how to get his hands on the ball! Definitely worth considering! There were also two ruckmen playing their first games – Naitanui and Vickery – both look promising, and you could just tell the excitement in the crowd whenever Naitanui went near it! Whilst he had very limited game time, it will be interesting to see what is done with Cox as the year goes on and Naita gets more TOG. This means Cox will either spend more time on the pine or in the forward line! We can just hope for the latter!

Get on: Matt Priddis – has struggled with injuries this year, but has worked hard to get back. His past two games have been brilliant, especially in a losing side. I like his stats, and his tackle count! Also on his resume is when he beat the Ling tag last week against the Cats! He is hard to ignore!

Get off: Matt Spangher: I bet Richmond would have won by less if Spangher spent the game on the bench… it was just one of those days when nothing went right for him unfortunately. For a fringe player, this may mean a return to the WAFL.

Injury: The head clash between Mitch Brown and Will Thursfield was the only incident, but both should line up next week. 

Sunday:

Hawthorn vs Brisbane: 

All week I was reading articles about how Buddy is back and how he is about to be back in his Coleman-medal winning form… However, 32 points was a terrible result for an out-of-form Buddy, let alone an in-form one! He looked the opposite of everything he was last week – he refused to work hard for the ball when it wasn’t near him, and looked more laconic than usual. Admittedly, it didn’t come down his end much in the second half, but that should be no excuse! Especially against a side missing their first choice CHB and Full-back! Up the other end, however, was a firing Jonathan Brown – unlike last week, he just couldn’t miss, kicking 5 goals straight. Other players I liked this game were Xavier Ellis, who has lacked form and fitness recently, but was one of the Hawks best players today, and with a score of 154, it is hard not to comment on Luke Power, who spent a lot of time running off half back – but it was his 10 tackles which stood out! That’s 40 points from tackling! That’s three more points than Buddy scored for the whole match! Point made!

Get on: Xavier Ellis – whilst he wasn’t best, nor even top 3 on the ground, I thought that being so cheap for his potential could make him a very good trade target! He can get a lot of the ball and average high numbers! He is only cheap due to his recent injuries, but will be much better after having a good run the past fortnight! Strongly consider him for his current price!

Get off: Ben McGlynn – I didn’t even realise he was playing until I saw the stats sheet – 5 touches is hardly enough to keep your spot!

Injury: Troy Selwood – dislocated his shoulder and will probably need scans to determine if there is any other damage! Hodge owners should be very happy he went down, due to his tagging job! 

North Melbourne vs Adelaide: 

This was an ultra scrappy, wet, unskilful, boring, ugly match, with few elements to make it a successful DT game! If you had any of the players from this match in your team, take their score and add 12 points (give or take a few) – this is what they could have scored if it weren’t for the fact that every player dropped just about every single marking opportunity! Frustrating, to say the least! The best player of the match was again Scotty Thompson – great news for those who grabbed him a couple of weeks ago when he bottomed out! The other great news was the score of 65 from Petrenko! Definitely much better than 12 for all of those who have persisted with him! Unfortunately, the worst thing about this match was not how boring it was, but again it was the injuries – Jack Ziebell jumped head first into a contest and in the process did two things – broke his leg and also cemented himself as a future Captain of the club – it was one of the most courageous things seen on the footy field all year! Also, Brent Reilly of Adelaide and Lindsay Thomas of North each looked to have done their hamstrings.

Get on: Hamish McIntosh – these were NOT big man conditions, yet he still managed the ton! Further proof that he is one of the premium ruckmen in the competition this year!

Get off: Corey Jones – he didn’t actually play that badly, and you feel sorry for him every time he makes a slight mistake… but we know that Laidley will drop him this week, regardless of form.

Injury: As stated above, Ziebell looks like he broke his leg, and Reilly and Thomas each did hamstrings.

Expert: Dan
Team: Hank Scorpio EDT
Round 12 Score: 2,183 
Overall Ranking: 4,312
Trades Remaining: 7
Remaining Salary Cap: $72,700
Team Changes This Week:
In: Sam Fisher
Out: Chad Cornes

Expert: Toby
Team: Fiora’s Hardnuts
Round 12 Score: 2,224 
Overall Ranking: 425
Trades Remaining: 5
Remaining Salary Cap: $40,500
Team Changes This Week:
In: Gary Ablett, Hayden Ballantyne
Out: Daniel Rich, Mitchell Brown

Expert: Ben
Team: The Redbacks
Round 12 Score:  2,114
Overall Ranking: 2,830
Trades Remaining: 6 
Remaining Salary Cap: $92,000

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.

View The Redbacks’ Team
Round 10 Score: 1,941
Current Overall Ranking: 3,690
Trades Left: 6
Remaining Salary Cap: $92,000

Follow The Redbacks’ progress for the remainder of the year in the Live Scores category.

Dear Footy Tragics,

It’s the half way mark of the season & this week I am changing things up.

I’m analysing my dreamteam & I’ll discuss what has worked & what hasn’t.

It’s fair to say that after finishing 19^th overall & making the final 4 of the eliminator in 2008, I was very confident leading into the 2009 season. It was 6:30pm on Thursday 26 March 2009, when I took my seat at the MCG in preparation for the big Round 1 clash, Richmond vs Carlton. I had made the final adjustments to my dreamteam 30 minutes prior at a high speed internet café near the G. Needless to say, I was very confident that 2009 would be MY YEAR! During the summer months, I’d done hours of research, I’d followed the pre – season practice matches diligently & I’d pictured myself driving around in a brand new Toyota come October. Well, it’s now Wednesday 10 June 2009 & it’s time to reflect on what went wrong.

ERROR 1 – Selecting Chris Knights ($369,200) prior to Round 1

I’d always been a fan of Chris Knights since watching his performance in the 2007 Elimination Final against Hawthorn (the one where Buddy won the game with a 50 metre bomb on the boundary with only seconds left at the Docklands). Knights was brilliant that day & I have always kept a close eye on his since. I selected Knights because he ticked 4 important boxes: 1 – He’s a young gun on the rise at 22 years of age; 2 – His pre – season form was very solid; 3 – He was a unique selection (only 2,000 teams had him); 4 – He was well priced at $369,200.

Knights scored 90 in Round 1, before fracturing his eye socket in Round 2 & picking up just 57 points. I traded him out immediately knowing he would miss the next 4 weeks. Knights was a calculated risk who didn’t pay off. He has shown how good he is over the last 5 weeks, with an average of 95 points per game in that period, playing as a dangerous half forward flank. Clearly the injury he picked up in Round 2 didn’t help, but I refuse to use injuries as an excuse. Blaming injuries for your poor performance is a cop out which fails to address the real underlying problem, which is a lack of depth in your squad. Furthermore, overcoming adversity is one of the many challenges we face in dreamteam.

ERROR 2 – Selecting Luke Hodge ($428,800) & Buddy Franklin ($428,000) prior to Round 1

I didn’t have either Hodge or Franklin in my team until 2 weeks before Round 1. While I rate both Hodge & Franklin in the top 5 players in the AFL, both played only 1 practice match in the 2009 pre – season (against West Coast). This was because Hodge & Franklin both required shoulder surgery after brilliant seasons in 2008. It’s fair to say I jumped onboard after the West Coast practice match. Both Hodge & Franklin played very well & scored accordingly. I’m still kicking myself for not being stronger & factoring into my calculations that 1 NAB challenge match is no preparation for 22 grueling home & away matches. I should have waited until now, as both players have dropped in price by more than $100,000.

ERROR 3 – Failing to select either: Jimmy Bartel ($501,800), Gary Ablett ($495,700) or Dane Swan ($455,000) prior to Round 1

The captaincy debate is an ongoing issue which you must get right. Looking back, I must say that I got this wrong. My theory in overlooking Bartel, Ablett & Swan was I would wait for their price to drop & then pick up 2 of the 3 between Rounds 8 – 10. The problem was, because they have all been so good in averaging above 115 points per game, their price has not dropped.

I also thought, I don’t need Bartel, Swan or Ablett because Kane Cornes is the captain of my team. I’ve always been a massive KC fan & my loyalty to him has paid handsome dividends over the years. People often ask me why I choose a tagger as my captain, but his record of the years speaks for itself. I could never bring myself to talk down of KC, but his average of 96 points per game this season has been below my expectations. KC has also dropped in price by $67,200 since Round 1. This decision has cost me an average of 40 points per game (440 for the year), as we all know that our captain scores double points!

HIT 1 – My stars in 2009

It hasn’t all been bad news for me in 2009. Brendon Goddard, Bryce Gibbs, Marc Murphy, Joel Selwood & Aaron Sandilands have all been very solid performers over the first 11 rounds of 2009!

HIT 2 – The kids

I was also spot on with most of my youngsters, with Daniel Rich, Jack Ziebell, Nick Suban, Greg Broughton, Hamish Hartlett, Jack Grimes, Taylor Walker & Steele Sidebottom all being extremely valuable selections (NOTE: I have already traded out Rich & Ziebell). My main strength is undoubtedly my knowledge of the young players coming through the system, so I’d be very disappointed in myself if I didn’t get this right!

HIT 3 – Avoiding Andrew Raines

It seems everyone had Andrew Raines prior to Round 1 in 2009, except me!! I’ve been asked why I avoided him many times, so here is my answer:

Andrew Raines showed talent during the 2006 season when he finished runner – up in the AFL rising star. While I understand Raines suffered a serious knee injury last season, he has gone backwards since 2006. I actually did have Andrew Raines in my dreamteam in 2007 & he was dreadful. As the old saying goes: “Once bitten, twice shy”. When looking for dreamteam candidates, we like players who: take marks, kick regularly & tackle at every opportunity. When Raines gets the ball, he runs 15 metres, takes a bounce & then handballs. Raines is the only player I know who consistently picks up 20 possessions, yet score only 50 – 60 points.

CONCLUSION

While I can’t win the car, I can salvage some pride. I’m currently sitting 3,690 overall, which is not much worse than my position at the same time last year. I’m aiming to come home with a rush & finish in the top 200. I’ve learnt some valuable lessons this year, which unfortunately have been learnt the hard way.

One last thing, if you are having a good season in 2009, never let anyone tell you that you are having a “lucky year”. As the great Allan Jeans said “Luck is where preparation meets opportunity”.

Good luck!