Round 8 Teams.............

Hoppers.......Rd 8 - One change.

OUT: Stringer - injured
IN: H Grundy

DEF: Adams / Mills / Martin / Hunt (JKolo)
MID: Curnow / Cripps / Neale / Rocky (Aish)
FWD: Billings / Cockatoo / Cameron / Jong (Langdon)
RCK: B Grundy
I/C: Dumont / H Grundy (Weitering)

 

Apt that two teams who'll struggle to post 1000 this week are matched up in Spud round.

Birdsville 's for R8

D: T McD, L McD, Hampton, Robertson
M: Hunter, Atkins, Blakely, Sheed
R: Witts
F: Acres, Taylor, Weller, Turner
IC: Barrett, Sheridan (fingers crossed he makes the cut)

 

Some rearrangement of the deck chairs on the MV Kotuku:
In: Bailey Williams, Mason Wood, Aaron Hall
Out: Tom Barrass, Josh Dunkley (dislocated shoulder), Mitch Robinson (broken foot)

D - J McGovern, M Hibberd, J McVeigh, B Williams (T Barrasss)
M - T Mitchell, N Fyfe, S Menegola, D Hannebery (D Howe)
R - S Jacobs
F - R Burton, D Menzel, M Wood, T Mclean, (T Papley)
I/C - A Hall , B Crouch (A Swallow)

PS - excellent news, Jacob Allison named as an E for the Lions, perhaps his afl debut is not far away?

 

Len - I reckon you are well worthy of ongoing participation.

 

Cradle Mountain Devils Round 8 team

In: T Nankervis, S Gilbert, J Gresham,D Zaharakis
Out: J Hopper (finger), J Lever (hamstring), S Johnson (omitted), L Shiels (omitted)

Def: M Hurley, Z Jones, L Spurr, S Gilbert (H Himmelberg)
Mid: S Pendlebury, D Zorko, D Heppell, S Grigg (L Shiels)
Ruc: T Boyd
Fwd: T Lynch, J Steele, T Membrey, J Gresham (S Johnson)
Inter: T Nankervis, D Zaharakis (J Redden)

Cradle Mountain have made a season-high four changes comprised of two compulsory and two optional for the massive clash with the fast rising Hoppers who sit third on the ladder, one spot behind the Devils and with an identical six win, one loss record. Jake Lever misses due to a hamstring injury whilst a finger injury will keep Jacob Hopper out of the match against the Hoppers, in the corresponding fixture last year Hopper made his ORFFA debut in a 58 point loss to the Hoppers. After starting the 2017 season on the injury list Lever and Hopper had been able to cement themselves as the Devils defender 4 and forward 4 respectively and rank 12th & 13th at the club for points per game. Amazingly Cradle Mountain’s top 11 ranked players have missed zero games collectively due to injury over the first 8 rounds. Two CMD selections at the inaugural ORFFA Draft just over five years ago have both been dropped – Stevie J & Liam Shiels.

After serving his one game suspension Toby Nankervis returns to start on the interchange and will be sharing ruck duties with another member of the 2014 draft class Tom Boyd who scored 105 in Round 7 as the Devils number 1 ruck to equal the 105 points per game Toby is averaging this season – ranked equal second in the ORFFA for rucks. Midfielder David Zaharakis has been recalled after a couple of weeks in the seconds. Defender Sam Gilbert & forward Jade Gresham are the other two inclusions with Gresham completing a very Saintly forward line, three parts current St Kilda players, and one part former Saint in Tom Lynch.

 

@anthak Stevie J was very disappointed when it came time to discuss his position in the side at the Thursday night match committee and lost the vote 1-3 to Andrews, Bolton & Fletcher, resulting in him being omitted. To Stevie J and Liam Shiels’ credit they both performed very strongly in the magoos and Stevie J kicked the perfect crumbers goal in the final minute to win the game, providing a great thrill for Cradle Mountain’s home crowd, many several young players playing alongside Stevie J for the first time and of course for Stevie J himself. After the game a Devils fan tweeted:

‘I've said it before and I'll say it again. Nobody loves Stevie J as much as Stevie J loves Stevie J’

In the ORFFA game the young Hoppers hit the Devils with everything they had in the first half to lead by 179 points, 767-588 after seven players had taken the field for both sides, however the Devils are fighting back and it looks like this game between second and third on the ORFFA ladder is going right down to the wire. Gundagai are unlucky with some courageous play from Jayden Hunt that resulted in a Hoppers goal also resulting in the young defender getting knocked out and carried off on a stretcher early in the third quarter.

Cradle Mountain Devils 978/11 89 vs Gundagai Grasshoppers 937/10 94

Three of the four Devils still to take the field average over 95 – Nankervis, Z Jones & Grigg, with the only exception being Spurr. The Grasshoppers have one gun in Lachie Neale still to play who is averaging 118 points per game and is in the top 10 of the Les W Medal, however the other four Hoppers still to take the field average between 69 and 82 points per game.

Whilst the Devils have had six tons including two of the inclusions - Zaharakis and Gilbert, they also had four scores below 65 so Stevie J and Shiels are likely to be recalled for the Round 9 game against ladder leaders – the Venus Bay Vultures. Four Hoppers have scored tons and already a score of 119 is only enough to score 1 Les W Medal vote with three Hoppers – Rocky, Neale and Billings all scoring above 135 points each and tallying 437 points between them.

 

"Looking at points scored, @graeme Waikiki are doing better than expected being the only top 8 team who hasnt scored 10k points yet, but sitting in the top 3 with only 1 loss!"
If you wind back to round 1 @anthak there were a number of Cows in the vet's shed. We fielded 10.5 players and scored 883. As a result we were creamed by the Misfits (1261). We sat at 17th on the table - thanks @That KI Guy. For the next 7 rounds we have scored 8918, averaging 1274; convert that to a "normalised" 8 round score (10192) and think of that as the points for column. Not great, but a little better. Hope that helps explain the anomolous points scored column ant.

Now we have a nearly full milking shed, but we still have a problem in that every so often our "mentor" (read old drunk) chels turns up and demands to pick the team, plays his favourites, and we underachieve.