Not only did we repeat last weeks' brilliance with a 2402 this week, but we also got our highest round ranking for the season, at 7,551 in round 17. To top this off even further, we're continuing our climb up the overall ladder, to no be ranked 18,753 for the season. It was a great week for the donors, and we didn't even have to trade to make it happen.



There were a few moves from the team in round 16, but our make-up stayed very similar in round 17, looking just like this:



Backmen:
Hanley 113
Heppell 81
Clisby 77
Goddard 69
Gibbs 60
Ibbotson 58
Midfielders:
Ablett 178
Griffen 140
Selwood 137 Captain 274
Cotchin 137
Kennedy 108
Pendlebury 103 VC
Vlastuin 85
Mitchell 80
Ruckmen:
Nicholls 88
Naitanui 78
Forwards:
Westhoff 152
Kennedy 128
Rockliff 128
Staker 114
Zorko 81
Cox 70
Bench:
Webster 50
Thurlow 0
Dangerfield 0
Martin 0
Rowe 41
Currie 0
Franklin 0
Johnson 0



As you can see, there's some pretty impressive scores in our side for the week, but also some that were well below par, and others that missed out entirely. A few more stars putting in slightly more star performances could have seen us blow the 2500 mark well out of the water, unfortunately I don't think we would have made the 2682 top score for the week.



Anyway a look at the team shows that defence is still a very weak link, with only Hanley topping the ton last week, and he's out injured this weekend. Goddard, Heppell, Gibbs, and Ibbotson were all below par, while rookie Clisby nearly outscored all four of them!



In the midfield we had Gazza, and that's all that needs to be said on that. However we didn't trust him with the captaincy, deciding to give Pendles a shot at the VC in the same game, with Duckwood as backup, which we had to use when Pendles spudded” it up with a lowly” 103 points! The rest of our premium mids did their jobs, except for the injured Danger, but his cover in Vlastuin and Mitchell were adequate. While in a normal week we wouldn't sneeze at our captain scoring 137 points, who-ever it was, the fact that Gazza scored 41 points more is quite disappointing, in that we didn't pick him, and that we missed those points!



The rucks are the next bugbear of the side. Our two premiums are putting up less than premium efforts, and we had to move one of them forward to cover for other outs. NicNat is now injured for round 18, and maybe the week after aswell, so its all on Nicholls to keep up the solid performances for our side.



Finally the forwards, where our bench of Buddy and Stevie J mean that there was a heap of cash and possible points just sitting there. This mattered very little, when we had The Hoff scoring 152, Rocky and JJK on 128 each, and everyone's super-sub Staker on 114 points! All of these points make Coxy's 70 and Zorko's 81 seem completely insignificant…



On the bench we only had two scorers, Webster on 50 and Rowe on 41, which were our two lowest scores for the week. The only missed points we had was Gazza's 41 extra captain points, and the underperforming premiums.



In the leagues we had another clean sweep, taking out 5 of 5 matches. We're now ranked 6th in UCantBeTooSerious, 2nd in UCantBe TS, 4th in TS Donuts, and 1st and 2nd in our two public leagues. I'll give a more detailed leagues write-up over the next couple of weeks, as the season comes to a close and we know where we stand, although its likely we'll be in the top 8 in all five leagues, so a good result from that perspective.



As I mentioned earlier, we made no trades going into the week, so nothing to mention here. We do still have some trades left to burn, and some cash just waiting to be spent, so come and join us in the donors forum to help decide how we can round out our season.