So JPK, what is this Donor Team you speak of? Well, the donors are a group of TS members who send a little bit of cash in Walesy's direction each year, as a thanks mate” for running such a good SC site. You too can do this, simply by going to the donate section of the site. Once you're done, Walesy opens up the donor forum to you, and we all have a little get-together and sing Kumbaya around a campfire. Alright, that last bit might not be true, but the donor forum is, and its where we run the donor team from.
This donor team, well each year the TS donors get together and make a camel that looks like a SC team. Everyone has their chance to influence the team, through initial selections, team set-up (although we will ALWAYS go GnR), and then onto weekly trades, captains, etc. The donor team is a little bit of fun, just to see how good a committee of self-confessed SC addicts can actually be. The goal of the team is to be number 1, which is why Walesy stays well away from any selection-type stuff (he may be good at running a SC site, but he isn't a very super coach!)
So yes, while we were all madly putting together our own teams for the SC season, the donors were off in the background, putting together a camel of a team, and this is what it looks like (plus the round 1 scores, to save space):
Defence:
J Gibson 108
H Shaw 85
J Newnes 69
K Kolodjashnij 47
K McIntosh 120
A Oxley 31
Bench - A Saad 89 and N Brown 53
Midfield:
S Pendlebury 113
D Beams 108
J Kennedy 127
P Dangerfield 123
O Wines 130
P Cripps 53
I Heeney 96
T Miller 30
Bench - A Vandenberg 99, C Ellis-Yolmen 78, and C Blakely 0
Rucks:
T Goldstein 100
N Naitanui 92
Bench - M Cox 0
Forwards:
R Gray 122
D Martin 51
J Bartel 90
M Bontempelli 126
M Clark 78
C Salem 55
Bench - J Hogan 79, and T Lamb 56

Total score for round 1 was 2,076 which has us ranked at 18,211.

Why did we chose certain players? Well some of that will remain a secret, and some of it has no reason.
We spent a bit of time bouncing between H Shaw and B Smith, before finally landing on Cheater. We had the Essendon defenders down back for most of the pre-season, but when neither Dalgleish or Edwards were named for round 1 we dumped them for the only rookie-priced players we could get - Collingwood pair A Oxley and N Brown (picked simply because he'll keep getting games, although he probably won't make much cash very quickly).
In the mids there was a strong consensus that Gazza was overs, and we didn't trust him to perform well at the beginning of the year. Rocky was also overs, and while it sucks to see guys injured, I for one am happy we over-looked him. Griffin spent a while in our mids, to eventually be replaced by Wines, so-far its been a good change! The rookies bounced around for a while, but we ended up settling after teams were named, although I probably did miss the boat on dropping Blakely from the side before lockout (J Anderson would have likely been picked instead). Who knows with Ross Lyin'...
Our rucks have basically been set and forget, although we did switch between Cox and Read on the pine, settling on Cox for some cash and more loophole opportunities.
The forward line also hasn't changed much since the beginning. There was some discussion over Lids and Dusty, but we convinced ourselves that Dusty was the way to go after seeing comments out of Richmond earmarking him for more mid time, and Lids for more forward time in 2015 - so-far thats not the case, but its only been 1 round.

In general we're happy with the team, and a few more selections going our way (like most coaches) will see us jump up a few spots. For example, Saad instead of Oxley and Vandenberg instead of Miller would have given us an extra 127 points, for 2,203 points, and a fantastic 1289th place overall.

There probably won't be any trades this week, not unless something goes very wrong in the next few days, but if you want to start getting involved in the team, head on over to the Donor section and make your voice heard (or your words read...)

And for those who don't know me, no I am not a midfielder with the Swannies, although I have a huge SC-crush on the bloke with the greatest initials in footy. You'll find JPK in my SC team every year, in my ORFFU team, and as you can see, I even managed to get him into the Donor team!