As I mentioned in the opening, things are coming together for the donor team, finally. This trading malarkey appears to be paying off, as we're hitting consistently high scores, and slowly moving up the overall leaderboard.
In Round 18 we scored 2,455 points, which gave us a round ranking of 9,543. Our YTD aggregate is now 38,142 points, giving us an overall ranking of 6,432.
We've got a solid enough team, with plenty of holes, some cookie-cutter selections, and enough POD value. If that doesn't sound like a complete oxy-moron, then maybe we need to re-define the term!
So lets have a look at the Donor Team for Round 18.

Defence
H Shaw 145
L Hodge 113 (VC)
B Houli 96
J Gibson 81
K Kolodjashnij 79
N Malceski 56
Bench of B Smith 64 and B Maynard 61.
We started the round with the VC on Hodge, expecting a big score, but his 113 just wasn't big enough. We ended the round with a strong performance from Shaw, who looked like he did his knee in the second quarter. In between we also had Houli and Gibson perform well enough (ok, technically they were also in the first game of the week), and a pair of bloody Suns with some average bloody scores. That boy Smith outscored the Eski for the second week in a row, so I think we'll be seeing a change down back this week, by a total of 8 lost potential points.

Midfield
J Selwood 171
M Priddis 125
L Parker 114
J Kennedy 110
S Pendlebury 102
D Beams 97
P Dangerfield 73
N O'Brien 43
Bench of R Knight 37, J Nelson 0 and N Fyfe 0.
Joel ducked his was to a top-scoring 171 points this week. It somewhat makes up for the 70's that he's been spitting out since we traded him in (not entirely fair...), although with his recent history we were never going to give him the captaincy. Gazza-replacement Priddis did very well, while Swans Parker and JPK were serviceable. Dependles appears less-and-less dependable as the weeks go on, while the Beams injury seems to be catching up to him. Danger is in danger of not being wanted by either Geelong or Adelaide with performances like that, while O'Brien did all we could expect of the kid, although another 107 points would have been really nice! On the pine we had Knight as the emergency, who luckily wasn't used, while Nelson still fails to get a game, and Fyfe missed one through not being suspended!

Ruck
T Goldstein 164 (Captain, 328)
N Naitanui 73
Bench of M Cox 0.
<Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V>
Its a good thing there's only three rucks this year, because writing the same thing week-in week-out about any more players would just get monotonous. Goldy was our second top scorer, but with a doubled 164 points, you won't see us complaining (although those 7 potential points from not selecting Duckwood as captain would have been nice). NicNat had a down game, but then so did my whole Eagles team really - having said that, 2 points is better than the 0 points the Hawks got for their down game! 73 points is average, and that's about it. There's also rumours around that Cox might be getting a game soon. That'd be a shame, as he's had a perfect record for us so far, you'd hate to see him ruin it so late in the season!

Forwards
T Mitchell 130
M Bontempelli 121
D Swan 116
R Gray 113
D Martin 97
L Franklin 72
Bench of J Steele 29 and J McGrath 0.
Ahhh, I love cookies. Almost as much as I love the fact that Longmire has finally realised that Titch can actually play, and has given him a whole game for a change. It was even better to see three of our Swans players performing well in the same side (there's the obvious jokes about Buddy being weighed down by the size of his wallet). The Bont also had a great game against the peptides, while Swan and Gray kept on trucking! Dusty was a little below what you would expect in a stirring win over the reigning premiers, but it might be that he's going to start running into the same issues that other top sides have - too many players wanting slices of the pie. Our bench wasn't used, which was good, because Steele was sub”-standard, while somehow we've still managed to carry the injured McGrath for the season (kinda getting attached to the guy now too!).

So all up another solid week, with only 8 potential points down back, and another 7 through captain selection, left on the table. Lets hope we can keep up these performances for the rest of the year.

Trades
Just the one trade this week, seeing the unfortunately injured Gary Ablett making way for the reigning Brownlow Medallist Matt Priddis. An obvious win in this trade, to the tune of 125 points, and only the loss of $200.
For the week, our combined trades gave us a benefit of 760 potential points, and $83,500 in total team value. Overall, our combined trades have netted us a total of $890,100 in team value, and potential points of 4,719.
Our biggest success in points continues to be the Salem-to-Parker trade, now worth 1,076 points. Next up is the Bartel-to-Swan trade, which has netted us 976 points. At the other end of the scale, our worst trade has been the Wines-to-Smith trade, which has cost us a total of 293 points.

Looking towards Round 19
It appears as though finals are upon us. What's more, if I read the SC website properly, the TS Donors Team is in a losers final in the TS Donuts league against one Mr Les Wales and his TooSerious.net team.
There's some motivation for you all. Head on over to the Donor Forum and help us beat the Chief!