TooSerious

Alright, with all the excitement of the last week, it seems that we have two rounds of nominations to get through this week, been a few big turn arounds over this time, the current dual leaders have both either been dropped, or gotten themselves injured, but I get the feeling that Curnow, with his upcoming price drop, will actually benefit under this scoring system so hes still definitely the unbackable favorite at the moment - That said though, we do have a new entrant who has flown up to join the top of the pack, read more over the break
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Round 6 Rising star

5 – Thompson
4 – Darling
3 – McCauley
2 – Hartlett
1 – Toy

Luke Thompsons younger days saw a shoulder dislocation mean that he was unable to attend the Draft Camp, this saw him slide past the national draft and fall into the Rookie pool. It was from here that the 20 year old KPP was pick up by the Adelaide Crows. Making his debut in round 4, weve seen him put out scores of 73, 78 and 126 which were enough for an $84k rise and the round 6 nomination. An LTI to team mate should see Luke get a good chance to further improve. (Yes, he got a 54 in round 7, but hey- the GC this week should make up for it)

Round 7 Rising Star

5 - Nahas
4 - Thompson
3 - Lower
2 - Harris
1 - Petrie

Richmonds Robin Nahas burst onto the scene in round 2, 2009 after winning the Fothergill-Round medal (An honor also bestowed to Barlow and Hibberd) the year before. After falling away in form in his 2010 season, a big preseason in 2011 showed a glimpse of what was to come. Amazingly, Nahas secured his nomination coming from a price tag of $328k and adding another $387k! This is all due to his recent awesome form, a 99, 149 and a 125 have lifted his 3 round average to 124- Gotta wonder how many will be willing to take the risk on trading into him!

Current Nominations: Curnow, Smith, Liberatore, Thompson, Nahas
Current Votes:
9 – Curnow*, Liberatore*, Thompson*
5 – Smith*, Nahas*
4...

Just a few things to get out there.

First things first would be an apology for anyone whos suffered through some downtime weve had recently. Walesys working hard on getting a few speed fixes through which should greatly improve lag time around the site but in the doing, it would seem he knocked out access to the stats for IE users. It should be back to normal now but if it happens again or you just want to get TS moving faster generally - <a href="http://www.google.com/chrome/">Google Chrome[/url] is the browser which works the best followed pretty closely by <a href="http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/new/">Firefox[/url].

To less boring news - Today is the day we send out our inaugral newsletter! Ducks are being put in a row as I type and it will be going out this afternoon. If you missed it last week, theres a taste of whats to come <a href="http://tooserious.net/TSNewsletter.php">here[/url] minus the ads for Dans. To kick it off, IASbet have put up a $120 in free bets exclusive to Too Serious with the details in the newsletter. Edit: Make that $150 in free bets. Awesome!

If you want to get in on the fun, go to your profile via the sidebar. Under the profile pic, it says "Thats you!" with an edit button. Click that bad boy, go down to under your basic details and theres some boxes to check there to allow us to send you emails and bobs your uncle. Or someones uncle, Im sure. You might want to check that youve got your right email address whilst youre in there.

If youre just reading along at this point and havent registered yet, youll need to register with an account for TS. Its super easy. I hate filling out forms to register for stuff on the net so we made it short and sweet and theres a swag of benefits - you can save your team and properly use the tools for the stats, comment on blog posts and join in the chat in the <a href="http://tooserious.net/forum">forum[/url] for starters. You can register for an account <a...

Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen, time for another edition of Best Buys.

This week, we have had the unfortunate injuries to Jack Grimes (season ending) and Ed Curnow (shoulder likely to be 4-6 out).   Considering Curnow was possibly on the verge of sewing up a spot in the competitive Carlton midfield, and Grimes was showing his clear captain qualities, both injuries are going to cause pain to their owners.   Indeed this week was move week for all teams that did not have them in their mix - and I must say its not many who would have not had Curnow in the mids given his form.   The injury really did come one week too early.

For the Best Buys, Im going to keep it real simple this week by focusing on players who have averaged 100+ this season.   This means that I might be avoiding players such as Selwood, the Riewoldt brothers, and a few other likely types.   I will make a small note at the bottom of players who Ive missed that might be worth a look.

That, and what to do if you can only direct-swap Curnow/Grimes after the break...

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OK.  So you have only one of Grimes and Curnow, and all you can do is direct swap.   Thats a sad place to be in, but heres a few options:

Grimes sideways to:  Milburn and Duffield who have bottomed out.   Gilbee, Kennelly and Grundy have fans, as does Rob Murphy.   All are about the range, and wouldnt lose you too much in the direct swap.   You might even get a boost.   For me, Duffield looks one that could be a sly pickup.

Curnow sideways to: (I generally would advise against this!)  Harris to pick up some more value that Curnow has left behind.   Daniel Kerr is up with a bullet about the same price.   Other than that I dont have much love for players as a sideways move.

To be honest, youre probably better working out whether to put Curnow down or up this week.   Id generally suggest up, but if you want a midfield option there are a few to consider going down to from last weekends...

The AFLPA had been traveling in the desert for about 3 months (which is a little longer than regular summer holidays) when they came to MCG.  They were going to stay there for a while plus they had excellent shelter from the stand.

Demetriou got unpacked and decided to walk up the stand to talk to Gary.  Remember that this wasnt very easy for Demetriou, he was already over 80 years old.

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Gary knew that Demetriou was coming so He spoke to Demetriou and told him to tell the AFLPA to get ready.  Demetriou came down to tell the people to have a bath and to clean all their clothes.

By doing this the people were getting prepared to hear important words from Gary.  That is why we sometimes dress up or make sure we have clean clothes on when we go to training.  It makes us hopefully behave a little nicer and shows respect to Gary.

On the third morning after Demetriou had talked to Gary, the AFLPA where busy making their breakfast when all of a sudden there was a large rumble and a flash of light over the stand.  Anyone who was still sleeping were startled and woke up suddenly.

Everyone went out to look and just over the stand there was lightning and thunder, and a very thick cloud hung over the stand so you couldnt see the top.  Even the stand shook and the sound of trumpets could be heard getting louder and louder.

So Demetriou went up the stand to hear from Gary once again.  This time Gary told Demetriou, "Go down to the people and tell them not to follow you up the stand, the stand is a special place because I am here."  So Demetriou warned the people not to touch or go to close to the stand.

After that Demetriou went back up the stand.  But this time he stayed there for a long time (40 days and 40 nights), Gary sure had a lot to tell him.  Gary wanted to instruct the people on how to live.  By following His rules they would have less sadness in their lives.  Gary just wanted to protect them.

Its just like when our...

Last week was a little tumultuous, with team selections throwing our previously made plans into disarray. We had originally decided to make two trades and had already chosen which players to trade out, and had a fair idea of who we would bring in; however with Polec being dropped - avoiding a zero suddenly became most important... This all resulted in, by far, the most discussion we have had going since we originally selected our starting team. Thanks to everyone for contributing so much!

We ended up making the bold decision to keep Duigan - and he repaid the faith, achieving his BE and warming the pine (wishing he could have subed on for Grimes).

The only trade we made was Bewick to Iles - putting the (small amount of) cash in the bank for an upgrade, or two, this week - and Iles replaced Polec in our starting 22, but only contributed 58 points; however it was still enough to see him jump up $37k.

Our bench selections were ok - only drama was Duigan outscoring 4 of our starting backs, but we can wear that when 3 of them were Goddard, Grimes and Broughton, and the other - Lower - was only beat by 10 points.

Captain selection was spot on with the big man, Sandilands, pumping out a 162! Beating our next best - VC Selwood - by 36 points.

Anyway, we scored 2,173; and moved up in the rankings - by nearly 1500 spots - to 4,779th. Good to be back in the top 5000. Now for some upgrades to keep us moving onwards and upwards...

Over the break will be our players individual scores::::::::::<!--more-->
<table id="scoringPlayers" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0">
<tbody>

<td colspan="2">SCORING PLAYERS



<td colspan="2">



1. <a href="http://supercoach.heraldsun.com.au/player/575">Deledio[/url] (DEF)
<td align="right">117



2. <a href="http://supercoach.heraldsun.com.au/player/110">Gibbs[/url] (DEF)
<td align="right">102



3. <a href="http://supercoach.heraldsun.com.au/player/202">Heppell[/url] (DEF)
<td...

Gosh, its been a long weekend, in a week that started with predictions of 2500s all round, crashed harshly as news of ol Frank "Grimey" Grimes going down early with a season ending foot injury. Gotta feel for the bloke though, surely hes got to get it together one year! It does raise the question though- reload next year and get him in, or are we officially burned?

Anyways, click over for the full review (including a special effort by Jason, reviewing the Adelaide v Hawthorn clash)- actually, before that, I just want to say, man- it feels good to have my laptop back! How Ive missed it this weekend! Its funny how absolutely dependent we can become on a single piece of equipment!

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Round 7 began at AAMI stadium on Friday evening, where three debutants fronted up amongst the 44 players for the Port Adelaide v Hawthorn clash. The match wasnt a great spectacle to be honest. Port started the better team but eventually Hawthorn got their act together. Scores were level at half time, Hawks nosed in front by a goal at 3/4 time and ran out comfortable winners to the tune of 5 goals by the end. Franklin, this time apparently smiled upon by the SuperCoach gods, scored 114 which probably flattered his actual impact on the contest. Everyone will take plenty of notice of Isaac Smiths 102 SuperCoach effort, and although he started slowly, he appeared to run out the game well. As for the other debutants, Paul Puopolo (57) probably did enough to arouse some interest but faded after a bright start in Q1, while Simon Phillips only had six touches for 26SC before being subbed off in the 3rd quarter in a fairly disappointing display. Roughead, Mitchell and Bateman all also scored SuperCoach tons for the Hawks, whilst K.Kornes and Chaplin were the only players for Port to ton-up. Hodge looked out-of-sorts for most of the night, but managed 91 SC. Savage came on as the sub in the last quarter and kicked two good goals, although his 20SC will disappoint his...

Hey guys, weve had technical difficulties this week, namely, my laptops motherboard has died- and Dell in all their awesomeness, has bumped my repair back to next week- for shame mister Dell, dont you realise I have speed issues I need to be fixing?! (And on the speed issues- first up, sorry everyone, were getting hit with some unprecedented traffic of late, everyone looking up their upgrade trades at once- whoda-thunk!? - Ive got a couple of tweak which should optimize performance, but until then, get your research done early, or late at night, cause at the moment, its like TS lockout- everyday!)

So, what to do about captains, well, it appears that Jasmine has gone MIA on her recent adventure, which is very unfortunate as we dont even have the perma-captain to fall back on this week!!
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So, what to do- of late, Ive been doing my darndest to fill in, but this week Im afraid time has got the better of me- so what I am going to do is link to this <a href="http://supercoachtalk.com/good-afternoon-ladies-gentlemen-this-is-your-captain-speaking/">poll taken by the good folk over at SupercoachTalk[/url]

Taking a look there, we can see that Sandi is by far the favourite, and thats not surprising- Playing the hot tick of Richmond with his already hot average sees him be a get looking pick.

Selwood takes out the #2 spot, but to be fair, it is a Chappy-less pole, so I reckon those two would split the votes, again, against the Kangas, they should be good- Looking at the ticker though, while North have been doing a lot of losing of late, that hasnt neccessarily been translating to giving up a lot of points.

Third on the list is Chris Judd, coming off his big game last week, up against a struggling Saints outfit should certainly put up some good numbers this week.

Personally, Im still tossing up between Sandi and Chappy- with a sidethought of Franklin going to Hollywood against the Power- though he hasnt really shown a lot against them in the...

So, its round 7, Collingwood is having the bye, A couple of big forwards in Rioli and Higgins are out, while a couple of new rookies in Smith, Puopolo and Pedersen are all getting a look in.

Sorry about the performance issues over the last week, its been just as horrible for me! Hopefully well be able to get it fixed next week- Once I get my laptop fixed (Yes, Dell has pushed my repair back to next week, so yanno- if theres any Dell competitor that wants to engage in a game of one-upsmanship, drop me an email. )

Now, while the servers have been running poorly, once lockout finishes and the researchers all finish their research, the servers should be back to normal and the live chats will work as they always have.

Therefore- catch you all in the <a href="http://tooserious.net/live_scores.php?page=gameday&id=10250359&process=live">live chat![/url] You can whinge at me about the response times if you want

Lucas Beat the Best article the other day seems to have generated a fair bit of discussion around the traps regarding how many trades one should have made by this stage of the game much of which, in turn, has brought on a bad case of nerves on my part, 7 rounds in and 6 trades down.

A prevailing thought Ive come across is that by trading hard early, those who are near the top of the rankings are selling themselves into trouble later on in the season as injuries kick in and trades are getting thin on the ground and, on the flip side, people who havent traded yet are wasting opportunities to cash in.

This got me wondering, speculation and perception aside, is it a winning strategy to conserve trades or has history favoured the bold?

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Buster Gonads and Blue thunder most helpfully for my purposes, wrote down the stories of their seasons <a href="http://tooserious.net/2009-review-year-of-the-gonad-go-you-good-thing#comments">here [/url]and <a href="http://yscc.com.au/blog/archives/2011preseason/the-year-of-blue-thunder/">here[/url]. Ive pulled out their trades and broken it down so not only can we see how many trades they made and when but we can see them as a % of total trades throughout the year for the purpose of being able to directly relate the figures to this year.

<a href="http://tooserious.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/Trade-history2.png"><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-3026" title="Trade history" src="http://tooserious.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/Trade-history2.png" alt="" width="429" height="490" />[/url]

For those not interested in doing the math, this year with 24 trades at our disposal-
7 trades = 29%, 6 trades = 25% and 5 trades = 21% which means even with Impromptus trade like a fiend philosophy, hes still had 6% less trades than Blue Thunder last year at this point.

I just thought itd be good to throw it out there in terms of helping to plan trades and to help judge how were all...

Wow, it kinda feels like last week again, Rioli out, Higgins out- heck, just watch, there will be another shock forward out- Im sure!

Anyways, fill in the teams as they come through.

Also, while youre waiting, checkout the first copy of the <a href="http://tooserious.net/TSNewsletter.php">New TS newsletter[/url] - Sure its rough, and filled with GIANT FILLER ADS - (Feel free to click on them and buy booze by the way!) - but theyll be changed when we get it live.

Actually, this reminds me though- in the not too distant future (ie- when my computer gets fixed) - you guys are gunna be hit by a nag screen - only once - to sure up numbers for the ol newsletter, so if you like what you see, give it a tick and sign up- there will definitely be much more added to it!

Teams are over the break (Thanks Bearfly!)
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PORT V HAWTHORN

Port
F - Ebert, Westhoff, Motlop
HF - Broadbent, Schulz, Gray
C - P.Stewart, Boak, K.Cornes
HB - Pettigrew, Chaplin, Pittard
B - Logan, Carlile, Trengove
R - Brogan, Hartlett, Rodan
I/C- Pearce, D.Stewart, Hitchcock, Phillips
Em - Salopek, Surjan, Lobbe
In - Pearce, Boak, D.Stewart, Schulz, Phillips
Out - C.Cornes, Surjan, Thomas(Back), Banner, OShea(Shoulder)
New - Simon Phillips

Hawthorn
F - Bateman, Roughead, Burgoyne
HF - Shiels, Franklin, Savage
C - Young, Mitchell, Ellis
HB - Birchall, Gibson, Ladson
B - Puopolo, Gilham, Guerra
R - Renouf, Hodge, Sewell
I/C- Lewis, Whitecross, Hale, I.Smith
Em - Schoenmakers, Murphy, Cheney
In - Whitecross, I.Smith, Puopolo
Out - Rioli(Hamstring), Suckling(Knee), Bruce(Knee)
New - Isaac Smith, Paul Puopolo

WESTERN BULLDOGS V SYDNEY

Western Bulldogs
F - Grant, Minson, Giansiracusa
HF - Ward, Jones, Hill
C - Cross, Boyd, Sherman
HB - Gilbee, Williams, Murphy
B - Picken, Markovic, Morris
R - Hudson, Cooney, Griffen
I/C- Stack, Moles, Wallis, Skinner
Em - Addison, Djerrkura, Schofield
In - Giansiracusa,...