TooSerious

So, we learnt a bit last week, we learnt that Conca is a thug (Hi Damen ), that the Bombers are looking at the spoon next week, that Walesy is a flake for not getting around to reviewing said Bombers spoon game and that Boyd and Franklin are LOCKS!!!

We also learnt that a single week of the NAB is in no way enough time to judge anything. Each game, each bit of knowledge that weve picked up through the pre-season paints a rich tapestry of information to draw from.

Then panic and throw out when the round 1 teams are announced.

And onto this weeks teams.

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Sydney Swans, Geelong, St Kilda
Etihad Stadium, Friday 24 February, 6.40pm AEDT

GEELONG
1. Mitchell Brown, 2. Billie Smedts, 3. Jimmy Bartel, 4. Andrew Mackie, 7. Harry Taylor, 8. Josh Hunt, 12. Trent West, 13. Tom Lonergan, 14. Joel Selwood, 15. Jordan Schroder, 17. Shannon Byrnes, 19. Taylor Hunt, 22. Mitchell Duncan, 23. Orren Stephenson, 25. Tom Gillies, 26. Tom Hawkins, 27. Mathew Stokes, 29. Cameron Guthrie, 32. Steven Motlop, 33. George Horlin-Smith, 34. Simon Hogan, 37. Cameron Eardley, 39. Shane Kersten, 41. Jesse Stringer, 42. Josh Walker, 43. George Burbury, 46. Jonathan Simpkin, 47. Ryan Bathie

Personally, Ill be looking at Smedts here. Huge interest in the bloke with his DPP. Horlin-Smith is a maybe, but Scott did say that hes unlikely to play games early.
Stephenson of course will be watched by all and sundry- 3 rookie rucks were all the rage when Giles went well- imagine if Stephenson dominates!!
No Christensen is a little interesting though, havent heard of any injuries though, so he might be scheduled a rest this week.

SYDNEY SWANS
1. Mark Seaby, 2. Rhyce Shaw, 3. Jarrad McVeigh, 5. Ryan OKeefe, 9. Nick Malceski, 10. Mitch Morton, 11. Jed Lamb, 12. Josh Kennedy, 13. Andrejs Everitt, 14. Craig Bird, 15. Keiren Jack, 16. Gary Rohan, 17. Tommy Walsh, 18 Jesse White, 20. Sam Reid, 21. Ben McGlynn, 23. Jordan Lockyer, 24. Jude Bolton, 25. Ted...

** Thanks to port_leschenault for writing up the Defenders article. What we will do is just concentrate on the premiums, midpricers &amp; possible breakouts and then at end of the 4 position articles we will do up one designated to the rookies. Will do that last as then we get bit more time to see them in action during the preseason! Ive also added a few things at bottom of article **

In AFL the defence is one of the most important areas in a game and perhaps the most under-rated. Forwards may win the match but the defence will save it, just ask Hawks fans about Luke Hodge about the ’08 Granny. SuperCoach it is no different, the defence may be the weakest of the lines in terms of points but that just makes it even more important to get the right players into the team. Below I’ll list some of the main defenders who will figure in most of our teams with a bit of an overview on their situation to get the ball rolling on the discussion. I’ve split the premiums into 3 groups: Elite, Premium and Sub. “Premium” is always a subjective term but hopefully this will allow a bit of flexibility.

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[span style="text-decoration: underline">ELITE PREMIUMS


Brendan Goddard - $584,700

2011:  2373pts @107.8avg, 22 games

PastAvg: 130,115,103,90,106


It’s hard to peg down Goddard’s 2011 season, on one hand it was shocking, he dropped 23pts on his average from 2010 but on the other hand he was still the best DEF option in SC. His ’10 season was just that good, second only to the SuperCoach freak who’s now at Metricon. So he’s a potentially an undervalued premium who can score 110+ and he’s in the backline.  The interest will be to see how he plays under a new coach but at 26 years of age, there’s absolutely no indication of him slowing down or why he shouldn’t be in every team.

[span style="text-decoration: underline">PREMIUMS


Brett Deledio- $568,700

2011: 2308pts @104.9avg, 22...

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** We know we have these topics in forum but thought it would be better to get post on main page to try bring some more discussion on each position. They seem to get lost in forum. Will be posting other positions over next few days **

The rucks are possibly the biggest talking point of supercoach this year, with what appears to be abundance of choice. Not anymore is there your stock standard Cox/Sandi ruck combination that everyone locked in. Last year saw the emergence of the new brigade.

One thing to keep in mind when selecting your rucks is the fact last year their scoring got a little tweak, with hit outs to advantage becoming a major player. Rucks scores across the board seemed to be inflated by about 15-20 points, whether this was due to new points or fact the AFL sub rule forced ruckman to spend more time on the ground as clubs didn’t want to waste precious interchange spot on one of their big men.

One of the big talking points amongst supercoachers this preseason has been whether you run a 2 premium &amp; 2 rookie ruckline, or you take bit of risk and run 1 premium &amp; 3 rookies. Or if you’re really brave you could always run 1 midpricer &amp; 3 rookies!

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The popular option (&amp; most safe) is to run 2 premiums, eg 2 of Sandilands/McEvoy/Mumford/Cox/ Leuenburger/Goldstein and then 2 rookies, which should be Giles &amp; Stephenson this year.

But there has been lot talk about running one of those “premiums” and spend the $400K+ elsewhere by running Giles as your second ruck. This theory allows you to upgrade midpricers elsewhere to top premiums, or say a Gibbs/Thompson/Watson/Hodge to a super premium like Swan/Ablett/Pendlebury. A lot people will say you will lose points doing this, but it all comes down to how you spend the extra cash. Use it wisely and you have some massive upside to your team. Breaking it down most people will start about 5 or 6 rookies on field, so you all Giles has to do is beat whoever would be...

Welcome to the first 2012 edition of Best Buys, and my first as the writer. Usually Best buys is a regular season article focussing on the price movements of players and finding value, however this pre-season edition will be a bit different. As the pre-season SuperCoach scores arent released until the completion of the NAB Cup Ive had to use some estimated figures to calculate scoring and price fluctuations, and with so many players playing its ended up pretty big. This week covers the first 9 teams to play, and there will be a follow-up edition next week.

Since it’s a fairly large article, I’d suggest grabbing a coffee or reading over lunch, and joining us over the break!
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This year I’ll be taking on the mantle of “Best Buys Writer” and providing the article, but as always the key part of this thread is the community input. The “thumbs up, thumbs down” system has worked really well in the past and provides an excellent way for the greater TS community to vote on your trade ideas. All the old hands around here will know all of this but for the new guys I’ll do a quick re-hash anyway. Simply put, you post your idea of a trade in the article comments with two options and the community tells you via the thumbs what they think. E.g. “Curnow upgrade to Swan?” or “Curnow upgrade to? Thumbs up for Swan, thumbs down for Ablett”. This takes personal feelings out of the equation and gives you great unbiased feedback from TS as a whole. If you are posting a question it is generally good form to answer a few other peoples questions while you’re there, and it helps to kill some time while you wait for answers. Generally speaking though it is best to give your trade suggestions 48 hours or so before tallying to get a more even spread of TS user feedback.


Best Buys as an article will outline players each week who will go up in price, down in price, or are great value where they are and will be listed by position, and sectioned into rookies, mid-pricers...

We have had a vote going over the past week about the possibility of a trade deadline. We did have one last season, and some people did speak very strongly of the merits of one prior to the season starting; however the votes have been tallied and we will not be having a trade deadline this season. It was pretty close, with only a couple of votes in it - but I did set a deadline of today, so that is final now. Open slather for the remainder of the season.

This next matchup is an odd one due to the All Star break happening in the middle of it, but there are also 10 days with games during it, compared to the usual 7, so its a longer one in both ways - and we still only have the 5 acquisitions available to us, so use them wisely .

The highest score this week, once again, went to <a title="The Jug-O-Naughts (Kristian Collins)" href="http://games.espn.go.com/fba/clubhouse?leagueId=10094&amp;teamId=2&amp;seasonId=2012" target="_top">The Jug-O-Naughts[/url] (coached by Fez) in Div1, with a monster score of 1929, which was more than 200 higher than than the next closest - 2 teams tied on 1718. The highest scoring loser was <a title="Team Ring Ticklers (joel Lamerton)" href="http://games.espn.go.com/fba/clubhouse?leagueId=10201&amp;teamId=10&amp;seasonId=2012" target="_top">Team Ring Ticklers[/url] (coached by joellamerton) who had 1617 points in Div 2 - which was the 5th highest score of the round. The lowest score for this week was  by <a title="CK Nicks (Costa Kastanis)" href="http://games.espn.go.com/fba/clubhouse?leagueId=10094&amp;teamId=12&amp;seasonId=2012" target="_top">CK Nicks[/url] (coached by costak) in Div 1 with 945 points as 1 of only 2 teams to score less than 1000 - interestingly, the highest and lowest scores of the week were against each other, resulting in a margin of 773 points between them. On the other end of that scale, there were 3 games with a margin of 15 or less, but the smallest margin of the week was 13 - between <a title="Too...

Well, I was going to get started on my reviews from tonights games, but with the Bombers efforts, I think I might need to wait on that one.

While waiting however, check out my review of last nights games with the debut of the GWS, and how they we *almost* undefeated, but still dont have a win.

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GWS vs Bulldogs

Result: Dogs by 5, 5.5.35 to 1.3.3.30

Wow, what were the dogs thinking with that red? I mean, in isolation, its not that bad an outfit, but straight up against the orange Giants, it just seemed a terrible idea! I gotta say, wow, the GWS werent as bad as I thought they would be. That said though, it is the first game of the NAB, so Im sure the Dogs werent going at 100%. Still, if not for a Mohr punch, it would have been a Giant victory.

Palmer top scored for the GWS with 10 disposals and 48DT, I reckon though it will be about a 5SC, his disposal was pretty bad.
Giles was prolific, 6 touches and 7 hitouts for a 45. If you could guarentee me that Brogan was going to miss early, Giles would definitely come into the R2 equation.
McDonald looked great out there. Was rotated a bit, but 9 disposals and 38DT at a rookie price is tough to go past!
Darley, again, 10 disposal, he certainly got a lot of the ball and should be on everyones radar right now.
Curtly kicked the first goal for the GWS and got a fair few touches further up the ground. His disposal wasnt great, but hes certainly one to watch.
Scully/Ward, not fantasy relevant if that performance is anything to go by (of course, only a fool judges off this one performance)
Coniglio wasnt great, certainly didnt do enough to justify his premium rookie price.
Issy wasnt as bad as his 0 suggests, at least in the first half.

Ha, 17 touches for Boyd- gosh he racks them up didnt he! And he certainly has started the season red hot.
I expected Giansiracusa to do well here, he tends to start every year- particularly the pre-season well, then head down hill from mid-season...

How bloody good is it that the footys back. I mean, sure, its just the pretend stuff, but its bloody good to be back.

Check out over the break to see the first three games of the season.

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North Melbourne vs Richmond

Result: North by 3, 7.2.44 to 6.5.41

Wow, how did North end up winning this one, they looked absolutely terrible early, but with late goals to Petrie and Edwards, managed to fall into the half time break only two points behind. The second half started much as the first did, with Richmond - in particular Martin and Conca, doing some good things to get them out to an early lead.

It was at this stage that Conca rubbed out Patch Adams, it was reasonable innoucuous- Conca laid a block onto Adams, who from what you can tell, didnt see it coming. Heads clashed and Adams left the ground with a concussion. Still, it was very behind the play, and the AFL doesnt like behind the play, so for mine, hell get weeks. Now, I dont know if NAB weeks can be served out in the NAB or not- still waiting for the official word, but its a shame as Conca was looking very good.

From the hit on out though, it was all Roos, kicking the next 3 goals to run out 4 point victors. Though they did cop what looks a 6-8 week injury to Grima.

We dont have any Supercoach scores, but from a DreamTeam front, we have the following:

Brad Miller led the way for the Tigers, 7 disposals and 2.2 for a 47.
Dustin Martin looked every bit as good as I would have hoped. 11 disposals and 1.1 for a 43, and doing everything possible to get locked into my forward line.
Maric dominated the rucking against a pretty top-line outfit, scoring 12 of the games 20 hitouts. I think the dirty mullet might have helped with his streamlining, or something.
Conca, as mentioned above, played through the middle and was very good. 7 disposals for a 30, was a fine performance. Gotta see if the MRP lets him be in our teams though.
Morris looked pretty solid down back, he...

Hey guys, just quickly, I got the uploads working.

I should probably give usage instructions to you new guys, but its late and I gotta hit the sack!

Well, at least in a couple of hours.

But in the meantime, lets get the live chat up for the weekend!

Click on read more to join the chat!

and CARN THE BOMBERS!!!

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