Footy Tragic

Welcome to round five of the Weekly Wrap! Another big week in football sees tipsters struggling to pick more than four winners – but lucky for us, our passion is for Dream Team, not tipping! Whilst Richmond and Fremantle finally took home their first wins for the season, Melbourne could not continue their heroics from last week. We also saw major injuries to two players under many coach’s watchful eyes – Brent Harvey with a dislocated elbow, and David Hille, who has ruptured his ACL – Not good news for those who traded either of them in this week!

Friday:

St.Kilda vs Port Adelaide: 

I feel like a very nervous supporter saying this, but the Saints are definitely beginning to look like the real deal! They absolutely smashed Port in all aspects of the game. For those who had Riewoldt on their radar, hoping he’d have a shocker, bad luck… he scored 136 points in a dominant display, increasing his price by at least $15,000. Whilst being the highest Dream Team player on the field, it was not Rooey who was the most impressive – it was Lenny Hayes – he has been playing well the past few weeks, but with limited game time. This week, he played his full role and looked absolutely brilliant! Those who saw the game would agree he was best on field. The best part is, because of his limited game time so far this season, he can still be purchased for under $400,000. GET HIM!  

For Port, there were unfortunately no real stand-outs. But I would love to see Robbie Gray be given a bigger role in the midfield – he looks like a star in the making, just waiting to be given the right role. He may not break out this year, but is definitely worth keeping an eye on! Another young Port player, Hartlett also looked quite composed – I would definitely consider him if you are looking for a cheap rookie mid, as his price is yet to rise.

Get on: Lenny Hayes – as stated above, he is now fully fit, and is simply racking up the pill. He was so dominant on Friday, there is little chance he will let you down.

Get off: Josh Carr – he looked very stale on Friday night, although keep in mind he was going head-to-head with Ball and Hayes – two very good in-and-under specialists.

Injury: Steven King – similar story to Kosi the week before – he was taken off with general soreness in the groin, but it isn’t serious. Don’t be surprised if he is rested though. 

Saturday:

Essendon vs Collingwood: 

This was a fantastic game – not so much skills-wise – but more for the thrilling final quarter. The first big disappointment of the game was the late-withdrawal of Alan Didak, hurting many coaches who were hiding Skipworth on the bench. It sounds like he should be back next week, however. The second disappointment was the serious injury to big man David Hille.

Unfortunate situations however, sometimes open up opportunities for others – Paddy Ryder (a $220,000 defender) was moved to the ruck where he played the game of his life – one could say he had a lot of ‘Dean Cox’ about him – he followed up his own taps and moved well across the ground as more a midfielder than anything else – anyone who has followed his career to date will be very excited by this move, due to Ryder’s fantastic athletism. It was also mentioned by the Essendon coaching staff that this move may turn permanent, which should have each and every one of you licking your lips! He’s a fantastic, cheap option for anyone’s backline, and should prove to have a lot of upside in him! Other notable news was Jaxson Barham’s second game –  not nearly as good as his first. Personally, I would hold off… I feel there could be some better talent around the corner – he may also find his place in jeopardy this week.

Get on: Paddy Ryder – if this move to the ruck is continued as promised, get on board with no hesitation!

Get off: Scott Lucas – his days seem numbered – he couldn’t hold a mark, and looked really slow. Unfortunately, he is not the Lucas of old.

Injury: David Hille – was injured very early in the game, rupturing his ACL – unfortunately this means a full reconstruction and the rest of the year on the sidelines. (But just think of how cheap he will be next year!) 

Hawthorn vs West Coast: 

This game was controlled by three men – Sam Mitchell, Jordan Lewis, and rookie Gary Moss! Oh how I wish I had him in my team, or that his price had not risen so much – he looked fantastic – he is composed, skilled and tough, and really embodies what I would call the Hawthorn spirit. He is however, still priced around $200,000, and with an amazingly low break-even will still make a lot of money for those thinking of trading him in! Luke Hodge has started to whittle back some form, although a lot of it was pretty easy ball, especially later in the game. He will start to get more ball as the Hawks defenders start to roll back into the squad. One thing I really noticed from this match was Buddy’s gut! He is not only scoring mountains of goals like Plugger, but now beginning to look like him! This does concern me (although I’m sure it is fine), as Buddy relies on his athleticism as his major tool. In the Eagles camp, Cox again scored heavily.

Get on: Garry Moss – looked great all night, and is still very cheap for what he can produce – could he be the Priddis of this year?

Get off: Ashley Hansen – showed so much in their Grand Final year and was known as their lucky charm. Now, he is a forward who doesn’t kick goals or prevent his opposition from zoning off… Dud.

Injury: Clinton Young – Hawthorn can’t seem to play a game without adding someone to the injury list. Hammy – should be 3 – 4. 

Richmond vs North Melbourne: 

Another poor game with too many injuries. Finally, Richmond won their first game, and it has probably thrown up more questions about North, than answers about their own form. Unlucky for North, they didn’t only lose the match, but also lost their Skipper – who could be out from anywhere between two months and a year – as well as their centre-half back.

Whilst this game was not much of a spectacle, we can at least take the form of some youngsters as positives – Alex Rance continued on – hopefully Raines arriving back into the side won’t have too much effect on this – although it probably will! Also, Robin Nahas probably had his best game in the yellow and black, however, with such a light frame (and the fact his price has now gone up) he is probably one not to get too excited about. Also, for North, Levi Greenwood made his debut, and he scored well and looked reasonable across half-back. He is well built and should hopefully keep his spot – especially as Laidley said during the week that he likes playing the kids – !?!!?! I couldn’t quite believe this one coming out of the mouth of the DT antichrist, but maybe his job is on the line, and this is how he can put reason to the losses…

Get on: Gavin Urquhart – highly rated at North, and is apparently one of their best kicks, meaning he will be given the ball as much as possible. He is still worth under $300,000, and worth a punt if you’re in the market for a new backman.

Get off: Richard Tambling – Clearly a week at Coburg did nothing – he’s still rubbish.

Injury: Lachie Hansen with a hammy. Richo with a hammy – although they think he may just miss the one week. Brent Harvey with a dislocated elbow – this could mean 2 months, or even a year – it is not good news at all! 

Fremantle vs Sydney: 

Whilst Sydney would be hugely disappointed with the loss, Fremantle were much improved. They played a much more attacking game plan, which helped playmakers Pavlich and Mundy work their way to good scores. Which is made even better by the fact they were playing Sydney, the DT point suckers. For the Swans, Jude Bolton, Goodes and Kirk were the better performers, with Ryan O’keefe, Darren Jolly, and Jarrad McVeigh letting the team down. For Fremantle, it looks like Haselby is going to find the going tough this year, as he is being quite easily tagged out of games… this may be the time to jump ship.

Get on: David Mundy – he was a good pre-season smokey who is starting to show his worth with his move to the midfield. He is a super accurate kick, and they want it in his hands! This aint a bad thing!!

Get off: Paul Hasleby – price is peaking, and as stated above, he can’t handle the tag.

Injury: Rhys Palmer – acted like he had done his knee, but fortunately it’s minor. Verdict unknown at this stage.

Sunday:

Geelong vs Brisbane: 

Unfortunately, whilst Gary Ablett only had 42 possessions in this match, (a few less than the week before) he still managed a score of 140! Fantastic stuff by the Geelong dynamo! He also had some mates, such as Paul Chapman and Jimmy Bartel – both known ball winners, loving the wet conditions! One player you would not expect to play well in the wet is Tom Hawkins – however, he played one of his better games for Geelong, kicking 3.2. It was also good to see Mackie back in an attacking role, nearly making his way to his first ton of the season. For Brisbane, the story was not so good. I am excited by Jarred Brennan – although who isn’t with the amount of potential he has?! He played midfield, CHF and even in the ruck, so he will be given every possibility to pull in the big scores this year, and could be a fantastic smokey to add to your forward line! No-one else for the Lions scored over 90, however, the likes of Adcock and Black tried hard. We were also treated to disappointments by Bradd Dalziell and Daniel Rich, both of whom found it hard to break into the game. Also of note – a couple of average showings from DT elite, Joel Corey and Steve Johnson will see their prices fall over the next few weeks! Keep your eyes peeled for them to bottom out!

Get on: Jarred Brennan – Lethal didn’t seem to tolerate him, but I think Vossy might work him differently.

Get off: Travis Johnstone – too inconsistent, and will have you pulling your hair out by seasons end.

Injury: Fortunately nothing to report! 

Carlton vs Western Bulldogs: 

The Doggies just looked too tired after their two trips to Perth in the past three weeks – they couldn’t keep up with the free-scoring ways of the Blues in what was quite a fun, high-scoring encounter. The highlight was Ryan Houlihan’s 124 points, especially for all those coaches who considered ditching him after last week’s poor showing. Matthew Kruezer moved well, acting more like a midfielder than a ruckman, and Bryce Gibbs showed us once again what he is capable of! We just hope he doesn’t bottom out again next week! For the dogs, I thought Higgins was once again their best – I love watching him play (especially knowing that he’s in my team!) Gilbee and Griffen were tagged out of it, and interestingly, it was Carrazzo that had the job on Gilbee – this aint a good thing for Carrazzo fans, as he totally sacrificed his own game in the process. The question is, will this role be given to him every week, or was this a once off? We can only hope, for DT’s sake, that he’ll be taken off the leash very soon!

On debut for the dogs was Jarrad Grant who looked OK early, but had very little influence on the result – he is going to take a while to get up to DT-ready status. P.S. Don’t be fooled by Thornton like so many were last year – he is a dour defender – it is rare that he has an attacking game like today’s!

Get on: Shaun Higgins – still going up and up and up! Becoming one of my favourite players in my team!

Get off: Nick Stevens – looked like rubbish, and didn’t try hard enough to break his tag.

Injury: Chris Johnson – when he was injured in the second quarter, you could almost hear the sighs of relief coming from the Carlton faithful – he was the king of turnovers for the first half of the match before he came off with a quad injury. 

Adelaide vs Melbourne: 

This seemed like a game of rebounding defenders, with Nathan Bock, Simon Goodwin, Andy Otten and even Ben Rutten racking up the stats at will after every error-riddled Melbourne forward entry. These numbers (especially Rutten’s) are majorly up on what would really be expected of them in the future. For Melbourne, it was good to see Brock McLean be one of their better players, whilst Aaron Davey continued on with his great early season form.

Unfortunately though for Dream Team, the usually trustworthy Adelaide youth seemed to lose their form – Petrenko had about one stat until 1min to go, and Walker and Dangerfield were hardly used, and hardly productive when they got it. Hopefully this does not signal a time in the twos for any of them!

Get on: Scott Thompson – has been eased into the season after an injury-interrupted pre-season… could this be his break-out game? Still cheap…

Get off: Matthew Bate – admittedly, a few weeks ago I said to ‘get on’ – however, I’ve since realised that whilst the kid may be talented, his position just doesn’t fit well into the Melbourne game… he will find it hard to score big.

Injury: Fortunately nothing to report!

Expert: Dan
Team: Hank Scorpio EDT
Round 5 Score: 1,891
Overall Ranking: 8,166
Trades Remaining: 17
Remaining Salary Cap: $116,900

Expert: Toby
Team: Fiora’s Hardnuts
Round 5 Score: 2,219
Overall Ranking: 122
Trades Remaining: 18
Remaining Salary Cap: $68,400

Expert: Ben
Team: The Redbacks
Round 5 Score: 1,896
Overall Ranking: 9,173
Trades Remaining: 18
Remaining Salary Cap: $15,300

Quick note to those looking for the ‘Selection’ video broadcast – it will be posted tomorrow morning (Friday 24th) at 8am. Cheers

It may seem like a bit of a cop out to do a falling premium in the forwards again, but considering a lot of people will be looking to trade out Skipworth, it’s at least topical. I wasn’t going to go in this direction with another forward, but each week I want to try and talk about a player that I think will be a good decision based on where the most popular trade target will be.

The first debate with getting rid of Skipworth will be discussed on the video blog in it’s new time of Friday morning – upgrade him or downgrade him? I’ll go with an upgrade for this discussion, because personally that’s what I’ll be looking to do. The downgrade targets are pretty ordinary, in my opinion.

Boomer started off ridiculously slow this year, hovering around 60-70 in the first three games, so his price dropped significantly and his rolling average (his last three games, which affects his price change) was so damaged that he still went marginally down in price after a return to form last weekend with a 131.

With a champ like Boomer, you can generally expect to see him bounce back and I reckon he, in particular, is one of the more timeless classics in the league. He’s a guy who isn’t particularly affected by his advancing years. He went a long way to showing this on the weekend against Essendon.

With Richmond coming up this weekend you’d be disappointed with anything less than 100, so it’s pretty reasonable to predict that this will be the lowest his price gets this season. He generally has a field day against them. He averages 101.6 vs. the Tigers over the last seven years and his worst score against them over that time is 92.

But don’t just consider this week. Boomer is a guy who has averaged 90+ over the past three years (though never before that…bit like Richo, he got better with age!) so obviously you’re buying him for the long term, I was just emphasising the good timing of getting him now – a Skippy sized hole in most DT forward lines, a great match up for him this week and the possibility that he’s bottomed out in price.

Skippy to Harvey as a straight swap might not be achievable for a lot of DT’ers. You’ll need a little over $120K in the kitty already. Annoyingly I’m $4K short again. Everyone’s situation will be unique, but as a general rule I wouldn’t be forcing Boomer into your side with a double trade if you’re already down to 16 or even 17 trades. Ideally you wouldn’t want to be down to 14 or 15 trades after Round 5 just because you felt you couldn’t miss Boomer now. It’s just a pity Skippy didn’t make the money we would’ve been originally hoping for.

I know this is going a little off track for the POTW article, but if you are struggling with trades already and you do have Skippy, so long as you have decent cover on your bench for now I’d keep an eye on Daniel Giansiracusa’s next few games. Another gun who has had a slow start, but I would be pretty keen to get. He’ll still fall in value over his next game or two, so Gia might just fall into your price range if you’re patient.

View The Assassins’ team here

Dear The Assassins. 

Thank you for submitting your team. 

This week, I’m taking a slightly different approach. I’m going to start off by identifying a very common problem I have found in 2009. 

A question without notice to all footy tragics out there: 

“How many of you allocated yourself a positional budget before Round 1″? 

Budget you ask? By this I mean, How much money did you allocate to your defence? How much to your midfield? How much to your rucks & How much to your forwards? 

You MUST have a budget & strategically allocate funds to each position. When it comes to dreamteam, failing to plan is most definitely planning to fail. How do you decide how much to spend in each position? The answer is: First find your weaknesses & then cover the gaps by throwing more cash into that position. You’ve had 6 months to develop your strategy & formulate a game plan. With the private leagues now underway, it’s crunch time! 

When I sat down pre – season to select my dreamteam, it became blatantly obvious where my holes were, my 6^th, 7^th, 8^th & 9^th backs. My solution? Take some cash away from my midfield budget & allocate those funds to my backline. 

There is no point in having a midfield of Bartel, Ablett, Swan, Corey, Kane Cornes & Scott Thompson if you are deficient in other areas. Always remember, your team is only as strong as your weakest link. The formula for dreamteam success is simple; you need 100% effort, from 100% of your team, 100% of the time. 

My tactic pre – season was to have 4 gun midfielders & 4 midfield cash cows. I’ve seen far too many teams with 5 or 6 gun midfielders, with only 2 or 3 cash cows. While most teams have Rich & Beams, far too many teams missed golden eggs in Otten, Dangerfield, Zaharakis, Robinson & now Barham. Why so many teams picked Paul Hasleby before one of those gems is beyond me. Not only did Hasleby cost you an extra $130,000 (minimum) prior to Round 1, he is averaging less than some of these rookies.  

As a result of loaded midfields, the amount of teams I’ve seen with a backline of Cheney, Petrenko, Raines & Broughton has been staggering. While I’m more than comfortable with Petrenko & Broughton (I have them both in my side), I can’t say the same about Cheney & Raines. 

There is only one reason why over 50,000 teams have jumped on the Kyle Cheney bandwagon – desperation. Hands up those footy tragics out there who were crying out for a backline option priced under $90,000 who was selected in Round 1. As I see over 50,000 hands go up, I think to myself, you’ve all been burnt. Cheney has been dropped back to the VFL after 3 average games. While Cheney did average 63 points, I can’t see him playing many more games this year with McDonald, Wonaeamirri, Buckley & Bell all expected to return to the Melbourne side over the next few weeks. As for Raines, I made my thoughts clear on him in last weeks article. 

Now, back to The Assassins. 

Proposed action this week: 

OUT: Paul Hasleby ($293,800) & Kyle Cheney ($131,700)

IN: Jaxson Barham ($86,600) & Andrew Mackie ($350,800) 

Use $11,900 from your available funds to complete this trade. 

The effect of these trades will be two fold. Firstly, you have bought in a cash cow in Barham at the expense of an over rated Hasleby. Not only this, you’ll lose nothing by bringing in either Beams or Barham as your 6^th midfielder. Secondly, you have shored up your shaky defence by slotting in a very reliable dreamteam player in Andrew Mackie. 

Good luck!