TooSerious

It's been another big week in fantasy sports, with some massive games, some disappointments and a bit of fools gold that is turning out to look a lot shinier than we would have thought.



Fremantle vs Essendon

Result: Essendon by 4.



It was an epic win for the Bombers. A horror week off the field, quickly turned into a horror on the field. I was a wet night, and for the longest time, it seemed that the Bombers couldn't find touch with the ball- with it slipping out of their hands on numerous occations.



It wasn't just with hands that teams were struggling, nor just the Bombers, with Hurley, Ballantyne and Pavlich all putting forward some of the worst shanks at a set shot I've ever seen. Ballantynes literally went sideways. If you haven't seen it, surely it's on YouTube somewhere.



74% of the first quarter was played in the Dockers half, and the second quarter it wasn't much better with the Dockers going into the main break six goals up 7.5 to 1.5



I dunno if there was powder applied to hands, or if things just dried out a little, but when the second half rolled around, it looked a different Bombers outfit. They were direct, their disposal was clean and they dominated. They kicked 5.5 to just 2 behinds, then carried that through to the 4th quarter to hit the lead.



Fremantle struck back with their first goal in 51 minutes, but it was the Bombers who took the lead in the dying minutes due to a Paddy Ryder snap. Chris Mayne had the chance to put his boys back in front, but only managed a posted from his left-foot snap, 15 meters out.



Due to those heroics, Patrick Ryder scored a massive 145SC from just 13 disposals and 25 hitouts. A welcome relief for his coaches, but still concerning.



Jake CARLISLE was fantastic all evening. Kept Pavlich to a minimal impact,...

<div style='color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; background-color: #ffffff;]So. Did you field the right players last weekend? I did exactly the opposite of the first week which landed me in hot water again. And I accidentally left kanezis on the field which cost me dearly and saw me tumble 1000 places. It is tight at the top, that's for sure! Obviously subscribing to the TS Sub notifications is the first point of call there! Silly me.
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<div style='color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; background-color: #ffffff;]How were your bench selections last weekend and what are your strategies for this week?
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<div style='color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; background-color: #ffffff;]I was thinking a thumbs up/ thumbs down situation mightn't go astray here either? I know I have coin flips.
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<div style='color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; background-color: #ffffff;]For those that might have missed it, there were some excellent tips in the comments last weekhere.

By<a style='margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px none #84b714; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 18px; vertical-align: baseline; color: #84b714; text-decoration: none; outline: none medium; background-color: #ffffff; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;' href='http://www.fridayexperts.com/]www.FridayExperts.com[/url]
[span style='font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18px;]Footy diets were once pretty simple.


Need protein? Eat steak and fish.



Need carbs? Pasta and bananas.



Need to wake up? Black coffee, no sugar.



Need to write yourself off? Slab of green cans.



As footy deviated onto an increasingly pragmatic trajectory, footballers themselves began to stray from that well-trodden gastronomic path.



Need protein? Blend up a milkshake full of powdered chemicals that will give you backne and liquefy your guts.



Need carbs? No you don't. Carbs make you fat.



Need to wake up? Take five of these No-Doz pills then pop a couple of sleeping pills after the game to knock yourself out.



Need to do a number on yourself? Grab a carton of Cruisers, Breezers or anything that smells like a tropical fruit and matches at least one colour on your sleeve tattoo. But not beer. Too many carbs.



Would Ted Whitten have drunk protein shakes and Midori Illusion Shakers if a sports scientist told him to?



No, he would have whipped up a couple of Molotovs and hurled them at the sports scientist's car.



So what would Mr Football make of the 2012 Essendon Bombers' diet?



Notorious Essendon sports scientist Stephen Dank this week identified a selection of substances he claims to have injected into Essendon footballers last year.



Pig brain peptides, sometimes...

<p style='font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; line-height: 18px;]Sub notifications have gone out and have hopefully hit everyones inboxes without a hitch. Everyones teams should be locked and loaded and I'm looking forward to watching the Essendon Freo game coming up. Should be a good one!


Join us below or in thechatto talk about the round. Is your team doing well or spudding out?

<div>Full teams are out. Big ins and outs are as follows



Ins : Kavanagh, LeCras, Lee, Wright, S. Johnson, Scotland, Broughton, Vlaustuin, Gray

Outs: Crozier, Watts, Karnezis,

xInt: Vlastuin, Macaffer, Russell, Thomas, Wines, Gray, Mitchell, Kerridge



FREMANTLE v ESSENDON

Friday April 12th, 6:40pm, Patersons Stadium
Fremantle

B: Lee Spurr, Zac Dawson, Michael Johnson

HB: Nick Suban, Luke McPharlin, Danyle Pearce

C: Tendai Mzungu, Ryan Crowley, Clancee Pearce

HF: Hayden Ballantyne, Matthew Pavlich, Nathan Fyfe

F: Kepler Bradley, Chris Mayne, Michael Walters

FOLL: Jonathon Griffin, David Mundy, Stephen Hill

INT: Cameron Sutcliffe, Paul Duffield, Michael Barlow, Matt De Boer

EMERG: Hayden Crozier, Tom Sheridan, Jack Hannath
IN:Hayden Ballantyne

OUT:[span style='font-size: 1em;]Hayden Crozier
Essendon

B: Michael Hibberd, Cale Hooker, Dustin Fletcher

HB: David Myers, Jake Carlisle, Courtenay Dempsey

C: Dyson Heppell, Jobe Watson, Brendon Goddard

HF: Brent Stanton, Stewart Crameri, Travis Colyer

F: Alwyn Davey, Patrick Ryder, Michael Hurley

FOLL: Tom Bellchambers, Ben Howlett, Heath Hocking

INT: Nick Kommer, David Zaharakis, Jake Melksham, Elliott Kavanagh

EMERG: Jackson Merrett, David Hille, Leroy Jetta



IN:Travis Colyer , Elliott Kavanagh

OUT:Mark Baguley (ankle) , Jackson Merrett
<p >
NORTH MELBOURNE v SYDNEY SWANS

Saturday April 13th, 1:45pm, Blundstone Arena
North Melbourne

B: Scott McMahon, Scott D. Thompson, Michael Firrito

HB: Aaron Mullett, Nathan Grima, Shaun Atley

C: Daniel Wells, Ryan Bastinac, Liam Anthony

HF: Ben Cunnington, Robbie Tarrant, Lachlan Hansen

F: Lindsay Thomas, Drew Petrie, Leigh Adams

FOLL: Todd Goldstein, Andrew Swallow, Jack Ziebell

INT: Sam Gibson, Sam Wright, Jamie Macmillan, Taylor Hine

EMERG: Kieran Harper, Taylor Garner, Majak Daw
IN:Sam Wright, Taylor Hine

OUT:Kieran Harper, Ben Jacobs
Sydney

B:...

<p style='text-align: justify;]I wonder who would have picked the Top 10 Leaderboard from last week: Watson (166), Westhoff (163), Hanley (160), Elliott (159), Bartel (157), Heppell (149), Wingard (145), McVeigh (144), Bellchambers (144) and Minson (143). I could be wrong, but I doubt anyone would have made any of these players (other than Watson) captain last week.
<p style='text-align: justify;]I have included more players than usual in this bumper edition of the Captain's Log for your consideration &amp;hellip;
<p style='text-align: justify;]Ablett v. Brisbane
Rd 17 2012: 150 SC points, 37 disposals
Rd 4 2012: 129 SC points, 33 disposals
Rd 21 2011: 134 SC points, 28 disposals
Rd 7 2011: 75 SC points, 20 disposals
Rd 17 2010: 144 SC points, 26 disposals
Rd 8 2010: 102 SC points, 31 disposals
Rd 5 2009: 149 SC points, 42 disposals
Rd 22 2007: 99 SC points, 25 disposals
Rd 12 2007: 142 SC points, 35 disposals
Rd 1 2006: 146 SC points, 27 disposals
Average is 127 SC points with 30 disposals.
Note: Five scores over 140 against Brisbane. A poor 75 in Round 7 2011 when he received a slight injury to his knee but kept on playing. Tagged by Raines in the past three games but still managed to average 138 SC points in those games. Has started the season with 178 and 99.



Franklin v. Collingwood
QF 2012: 117 SC points, 18 disposals, 4 goals 3 behinds
Rd 1 2012: 142 SC points, 21 disposals, 5 goals 3 behinds
PF 2011: 79 SC points, 11 disposals, 3 goals 1 behind
Rd 15 2011: 66 SC points, 17 disposals, 1 goal 1 behind
Rd 22 2010: 122 SC points, 14 disposals, 6 goals 2 behinds
Rd 16 2009: 118 SC points, 24 disposals, 5 goals 4 behinds
Rd 18 2008: 171 SC points, 21 disposals, 8 goals 6 behinds
Rd 7 2008: 162 SC points, 21 disposals, 6 goals 4 behinds
Rd 13 2007: 56 SC points, 8 disposals, 4 goals
Average is 115 SC points with 17 disposals and just under 5 goals.
Note: Great record against Collingwood. Three scores below 80...

This week we'll be finishing off the corrective trades part of the Best Buys, and trying to take advantage of the upcoming price changes. Any mid-priced options that are failing, or rookie choices that haven't had any game-time, should really be offloaded now before these changes come into effect, otherwise you can miss out on some serious cash generation.



The Best Buy this week, is Charlie Dixon. While Howlett and Libba were both also strong contenders, Dixon looks to be set for a real break-out year and is a huge POD at a great price.



The rookies haven't been looked at in depth, but they have been given an estimate of what price increase they are looking at after their next game, going by their current average.



The Waiting List section includes rookies who have only played one game, the score from which is denoted by the *, and premium players who look set to drop in value with their expected decrease included also.



Now, onto the Best Buys.






DEFENSE
ROOKIES



Brett Goodes (WBD) D/M 128.2k 106 +105k
Jasper Pittard (PTA) DEF 128k 92 +87k
Lewis Stevenson (PTA) DEF 115.9k 80 +74k
Campbell Heath (PTA) DEF 115.9k 78 +71k
Cameron O'Shea(PTA) DEF 168.5k 72 +50k
Luke Brown (ADE) DEF 135.5k 71 +57k



MID-PRICERS



Charlie DIXON (GCS) DEF 393.3k 127
Cheerable&amp;rdquo; Charlie has had an excellent start to the year in 2013 and is...

By William Thomson from backpagelead.com.au

Melbourne supporters have gone 'feral', abandoning decorum and patience following this disastrous start to the season.


The club has been bullish about its future for years and dragged its faithful along for a journey built on what appears to be false hope. Supporters can't help but feel made the fool and the tipping point has been reached. When Mark Neeld uttered the words 'rebuilding the rebuild', that was enough to warrant giving up.



The past two weeks have seen supporters clamber towards the player's race in their hundreds at the end of the game, leaning over the fence to hurl abuse at a group of players that have shown largely nothing in season 2013. The oldest club in the land has an identify far removed from booing players, and in some ways is a refreshing reminder of just how much they care. If anything, Melbourne fans have been accused of being dispassionate.



Plenty of clubs in the past have endured lean periods and heavy losses, but the manner in which Melbourne has made failure a characteristic is truly unique.



For supporters, the agony is made worse by the difficulty in apportioning blame as the media throws up a multitude of explanations from the board to the boot studder.



History's losers have seldom been as complex as Melbourne. More often than not, a club's shortcomings are as simple as blaming the coach or waiting for a list to develop.



Melbourne's rot is deeply ingrained and there is an argument to assign equal amounts of blame to all facets of the club.



The administration and board has done a terrific job in eradicating debt and at least ensuring some financial stability, but CEO Cameron Schwab has been divisive - from my perspective as a fan - and was at one point sacked before being re-hired. There is undoubtedly a level of incompetence at the top level that is filtering through the halls at AAMI Park.



In being pushed to resign on...

You guys know that TS is a bit of a one-man operation on the coding side, so there's always going to be bugs.



I rely on you guys to report stuff to me, particularly on other platforms that I might not use too often.



Main one I'm talking about is the Mobile issues that wasplaguingthe stats pages and making them un-usable. Only really heard about how bad that one was this weekend and got it fixed up just then.



Also, go a handful of other fixes up, including a calc fix and one that was preventing the Breakevens from displaying by default on the stats page!



Also, while I've got your attention, I just wanted to remind you all-



TS works for all 5 of the Virtual Sports comps. That's Supercoach, Dreamteam, Centrebet, Sportal and Sportsbet.



And again, while I've got your attention- I'm currently working on making our late notification mailouts a little more robust. But in the process of that, it was suggested to me, why not allow for SMS notifications? Well I've been thinking about it- and why not? It would be pretty awesome. The one concern I've got is that unlike emails, SMS's aren't free. So I spose the question I wanted to ask before going to far down the SMS path is-



Would you be interested in Late out/green vest SMS notifications? And if so, what would you be interested in paying for that kind of extra service? (Mind you, I'm not looking to make a profit on it, but will need to work out a fair priced that is balanced between Hoskins-Elliot and his 0 messages being a green vest, and Karnezis and his 1000+ messages)

This year the donors have elected to take a more aggressive path, we won't die trying! Unfortunately we need it, as we gave away a lot after round one, so have to make everything count from here on out.



In round two we scored 2128 points, placing us at a lowly 56,996 for the round, and 52,078 overall.



We made two trades leading into round 2 - getting rid of Vlastuin and Patton, and bringing in Heath and JJ Kennedy. Our two ins scored 85 and 103 points, while the outs only got 79 - so we were already infront based on that alone. The rest of the team went something like this:



Gibbs 86
Heppell 149
Goddard 129
Pittard 91
Heath 85
Watts 53



Pendlebury 121 (C)
Ablett 99 (V)
Cotchin 119
Goodes 98
Wines 51
Dangerfield 107
Viney 49
Crouch 85



Cox 118
Roughead 89



Rockliff 109
Kennedy 103
Franklin 116
Zorko 79
Varcoe 63
Karnezis 8






Stevenson 93
Terlich 56
O'Meara 120
Mitchell 15
Rowe 65
Currie 0
Neade 86
Macaffer 60



Down back we've made the mistake of selecting Watts, whose miserly 53 was well less than Stevenson's 93, which cost us a potential 40 points, and may have cost Watts his position in our side (along with many others I assume!)



In the mids we went with the captains loophole setup of picking Ablett as VC and having seen his 99, decided to stick with our captain of Pendlebury. His 121 was a good captains game, although if we had the <insert> to select Heppell as captain we could have picked up an extra 28 points. We also made the mistake of many a coach, fielding Viney over O'Meara, which cost us a further 71 points.</insert>



Our rucks were alright, although it looks like Roughie's change of role and lesser rucking duties are hurting his scoring, but it was nice to see Rowe get a decent rookie score, lining himself up for some price rises in a few weeks.



Our forward line saw the disaster of Karnezis and his 8 points! Although we'd probably never select him,...