The week leading up to the last match before the bye started off very tame for us, generally not planning any trades in a wait-and-see approach as we go into the byes. Then, like most teams, we saw the Thursday team sheets, had a good look at our forward line, and thought something along the lines of oh sh!t”. We ended up making two trades, but couldn't completely cover our donuts, so we went looking at the future rather than the now. It wasn't so bad, as it ended up making our captain selection a little easier: we picked Bonts...

I'll get to that later, in the mean-time, we scored an even 2,200 points this week. By now many of you will have an appreciation as to how much I love round numbers, so to see this score, knowing that it was round but also pretty decent for the week, with us ranked at 7,251 made me quite happy! Overall our aggregate is now 21,035 which has us placed at 20,998 in the rankings. We're on the improve, and the next three weeks are the perfect time to make that move!

Defence:
A Oxley 122
K Kolodjashnij 108
H Shaw 94
J Gibson 71
J Newnes 53
J Lever 0 (I forgot to take him off...)
Bench of K McIntosh 54 (emergency score for Lever) and B Smith 67.
We were one of the more fortunate teams, who decided not to trade Oxley after seeing his high BE, recent performances, and exclusion from the original team on Thursday. His 122 definitely came in handy! A 108 from Kolo certainly didn't go astray either, while Shaw and Gibson were alright. Once again Newnes was a letdown, while my personal stupidity forgot to take Lever out of the side, meaning that we got McIntosh's 54 onfield, and missed the return of Smith (finally!) and his 67. Swapping Smith for Newnes would have given us an extra 14 points down back.

Midfield:
P Dangerfield 130 (VC loopholed for 260)
D Beams 127
L Parker 125
S Pendlebury 114
P Cripps 99
T Dumont 74
JP Kennedy 62
C Ellis-Yolmen 43
Bench of A Saad 70 (E), J Nelson 33, and D McKenzie 0.
VC selections we can get, its those bloody captains we keep getting wrong. When we saw 130 for Danger it was pretty clear that we'd take it, so the C got moved to the non-playing Bonts. Beams and Parker did a great job, while Pendles couldn't have been more average if it was calculated! Cripps was also good, new-recruit Dumont did his job (despite the attempts of Razor Ray to curtail him!), CEY was a huge disappointment, while JPK missed a huge opportunity for a big score - although I have since read that there are a lower percentage of big scores in blowouts, as points are more evenly spread, and individual acts are less valuable, while close games seem to provide a larger source of captain-like scores. Not sure how true that all is, but its food for thought, and a decent digression from my analysis of my namesakes performance! It would have been nice having Saad onfield instead of CEY, costing us 27 points, while Nelson's low score and McKenzie's concussion were both untimely - unless they come back huge over the next three weeks, in which case all will be forgiven.

Ruck:
Seriously, do I even need to comment here???
Goldy with 128 to show he's back in form, NicNat with 79 to show that having the two face off (with Sinclair as backup) isn't good for his points score (or he can't take speccy marks in the wet!), and Cox still hasn't played a game...

Forwards:
D Martin 144
T Mitchell 144
L Franklin 121
D Swan 91
R Gray 87
M Bontempelli 0 Captain
Bench of M Clark and J McGrath both zeroes.
Who would have picked the Tigers to beat Freo? As an Eagles supporter I was so happy, but that all came crashing down on Sunday. Anyway, Dusty's 144 was great, its a shame we didn't have a speculative VC on him! Titch and our other new-recruit Buddy were excellent against the witches hats, possibly making a mockery of my previous comment about scores in blowouts - maybe it was just JPK who had an unnatural fear of the leather on Saturday night. Swan and Gray did alright, while having three donuts was impossible for us to cover without trading differently, which we decided against, although it did make the captain loophole very easy.

So all up we missed 41 potential points this week, but 2,241 isn't anywhere near as nicely rounded as the 2200 we scored this week! A score like that would have given us a rank of 3,448 this week, nearly 4000 better than we did, but its all hypothetical.

Trades:
So yes, two trades this week. The recently-demoted Krakour and recently re-injured Rockliff making way in our team for the cash-generating Dumont (with JS) and the forward-target Franklin. Seeing as neither Krak nor Rocky played, it was a clear points win for us there... 195 to be precise! These two trades were also our first of the season where we traded out players who had previously been traded into the side.
Purely for round 10, all of our trades have netted us a potential 460 points and $39,600 although not all of the points counted to our total. For the season, the sum total of all our trades has netted us a potential 1,707 points and $324,800.

On the points side, our best trades have been Bartel to Swan (unfortunately thanks to Jimmy's injury) at 672 points, and Salem to Parker (once again helped by Salem not playing, although Parker has been pretty-damn good) at 308 points. The counter to this is our worst trades, being Wines to Smith at -84 points, as Smith spudded it up then got injured himself, while Wines has come back very strongly, and Vandenberg to Lever at -98 points, since VDB has continued on his merry point-scoring way, while Lever has ticked over or missed completely.

On the cash side, aside from the immediate cash generation from the trade, our best have been Heeney to McKenzie and Blakely to Nelson, netting us $90,500 and $65,600 respectively. Conversely, the Wines to Smith trade has burnt us by $145,300 thus far (and looks likely to continue), which has been our only negative cash trade.

Round 11:
So, what are we going to get up to during the byes? Well, its likely there'll be some scrambling again this week, as we only have 19 players without little blue dots next to their names, with three of those not likely to even take the field. Do we trade to cover zeroes, or do we take this hit this week, in the hope that the next couple of weeks will be more kind to us?
Come and join us in the donor forum to help us decide!

...and good luck to all during the byes.