So, our 2153 points gave us 5 wins in our 5 leagues, not too shabby at all. We're now 8th in UCantBeTooSerious, ranked 5th in UcantBe TS, and topping the table in TS Donuts! In our public leagues we're in 3rd and 2nd spot, so if we can keep this up we'll be playing finals in all our leagues.
Our team breakdown for the week looked like this:
Backmen:
Heppell 107
Goddard 79
Terlich 70
Staker 67
Lester 59
Webster 38
Midfielders:
Ablett 129 Captain 258
Kennedy 126
Dangerfield 125
Pendlebury 119 (VC)
Vlastuin 108
Goodes 96
Cotchin 78
O'Meara 72
Ruckmen:
Naitanui 104
Cox 91
Forwards:
Westhoff 107
Macaffer 100
Zorko 100
Johnson 86
Kennedy 82
Franklin 81
Bench (all donuts!!!):
Dixon
Thurlow
Lonergan
Crouch
Gawn
Currie
Rockliff
Rowe
With the look of our bench, we were lucky to field a full 22 this week, and we're going to be right on the borderline for much of the byes if some of our missing players don't become un-MIA. But that's what trades are for, and why they give us three for each of the next three weeks. Its also why the allow us only 18 scoring players.
Anyway, down back, Heppell was good, with his 107, everyone else was rather disappointing. Its not helping that we've managed to trade ourselves into a position where both Goodes and Vlastuin are in the midfield and can only be moved back via Goddard and Heppell. Clearly we'll have to sort that one out over the coming weeks.
The midfield was a much better affair, with our top scoring Gazza keeping his permacap role after Pendles managed a very consistent 119 points (following the 119 and 118 over the previous two weeks, in reverse order, for those that have forgotten). Next on our list after Gazza were JPK and Danger, putting in some good scores after some disappointments of their own of late. The aforementioned Vlastuin and Goodes held their ends of the bargain, while O'Meara looks to be slipping, and how Cotch only managed 78 against my boys just shows that he must have caught the same disease.
It was the Cox-NicNat affair in the rucks, although with the changing of the guard I'm now going to refer to it as the NicNat-Cox affair. Clearly the two Eagles bigmen are witting the knockouts, they just can't tap it down to advantage. If they could, not only would the Eagles be the best part of unstoppable, but the NicNat and Cox show would be racking up 300 points between them each and every week!
Finally the forwards, where it looks like all and sundry hassled the Hoff enough for him to finally get it together and pump out a decent score, leading our forward line with 107 points. Trade bait Macaffer has turned things in his favour, getting a perfect ton, along with Zorko. JJK, Buddy, and Stevie J were serviceable, but less than impressive, especially for those who tried Stevie J as captain (luckily we didn't try that lurk!)
Since Gazza top scored as captain, and our bench scored absolutely nothing, there were no missed points this week - both a positive and a negative!
As for the trades, we dropped Neade and Leuenberger going into the round, and brought in Staker and Naitanui. In both points and dollars earned that was a huge win for us.
Please join us over in the donor forum to help keep the team rolling through the byes. We're going to need some astute trading to keep us away from the donuts over the next three weeks, especially if our players don't come back. We're also going to need to either move Vlastuin and Goodes back to where they belong, or move them on entirely for some absolute champions!
Good luck to everyone for the weeks of carnage.