No Ablett, no Goddard, no Rockliff, no worries. Our fan team racked up another win, with the 170-point victory over Port Adelaide consolidating our second spot on the ladder.
We had a zero in midfield, Claye Beams and Dane Swan only managed 88 between them and our captain in Scott Pendlebury faltered, but we still scored close to 2000 points. Harvey, Dangerfield and Martin were elite up forward, while Jarrad McVeigh managed 124 points in defence.
This week we play Adelaide, who are just one spot (but 3 games) below us on the ladder. It’s a split round, so we’ll need to be a little careful about our trades, and who we bring in.
List analysis
The key right now is making sure that we not only have a great starting 22, but that we have one or two backups to cover in the event of late withdrawals.
Our defenders are set, but we’ll need to upgrade Frost to a more reliable scorer. In midfield we have eight stars, including Parker who offers dual-position flexibility, but Dane Swan has hit the wall and we should look at a replacement there.
In ruck we have Aaron Sandilands and Todd Goldstein who are more than solid, plus the dual-position flexibility of Ben Brown means we can swing Stefan Martin in to cover if required. Up front we have six quality forwards, but again it would be good to bring in another player as cover.
Jeremy McGovern ($281,829) and Claye Beams ($272,074) are a couple of options we can look to move on this week. They’ve increased a bit in value and together they can get us moving towards a decent backup or a (Dane) Swan replacement. Rather than simply buying the highest scorer, however, we’ll be looking to grab someone that’s underpriced, making sure that we have enough cash over the coming weeks to fully upgrade our team.
Trade decisions
Now is the time to decide what we do with fallen fantasy champion Dane Swan. He’s averaging under 100 points for the first time since 2005, and he is carrying a foot injury. We’ll leave the choice to you. Either we trade him out and bring in another midfielder, or we look to move on two cash cows in Jeremy McGovern and Claye Beams.
In the event of option 2 above being the most popular, the second decision is who we bring in for Swan?
Finally, we have an opportunity to get a free shot at the captaincy this week, with a partial lockout for the split round. On this basis, who should be our vice-captain?
