A pretty good round by the donors this week, even with a disastrous trade and the common midfield injuries. As I mentioned, we scored 2,313 points in round 17, which gave us a round ranking of 6,756. Our aggregate score is now 35,687 while our overall ranking, is 7,076. A rather satisfying round really, which started off by putting the VC on Hodge, and watching him rake in 140 points. That was more than enough for us, and we ran with it, loopholing Cox back into the captaincy.

Lets take a look at the breakdown, to see how Gazza and the Swans burnt us (its like the Elton John song Benny and the Jets”, with the only difference being we had some reprieve from Gazza and the Swans.

Defence
L Hodge 140 (Loopholed VC, 280)
H Shaw 127
J Gibson 98
B Houli 90
K Koldjashnij 86
N Malceski 57
Bench of B Smith 83 and B Maynard 58
Two Hodgey's was the great news down back, while cheater was also a good news story. Gibson and Houli were serviceable (even if Bachar lost” the game... he didn't lose it, his was just the last of many problems for the tiggers). Kolo was also good, while new recruit Eski was an absolute joke, being outscored by both our bench players, and nearly doubled by the man he replaced! 26 points lost there, thanks to the new boy.

Midfield
J Selwood 142
P Dangerfield 141
N Fyfe 134
S Pendlebury 108
J Kennedy 107
L Parker 105
G Ablett 21
D Beams 0
Bench of N O'Brien 107 (Emergency for Beams), R Knight 58, and J Nelson 0.
Good call that was to keep Selwood in the side, and drop Cripps instead. 142 points in the comeback is a star effort. He was closely followed by Danger and Fyfe, while Pendles and a couple of swans were alright but not spectacular. Beams failed to show up, but we had O'Brien to cover with a fantastic 107. The big news for around 50% of the SC sides, and the AFL in general, was the injury to Gazza, and a dismal 21 points. We never would have picked it, but Knight over Ablett would have netted us a further 37 points, while Ducky did top score, so there's a further 2 potential points there.

Rucks
That boy Cox is making for an excellent captain. Which is good, because he's been completely useless to us otherwise! NicNat and Goldy were great as usual.
M Cox 0 (captain)
N Naitanui 103
T Goldstein 127

Forwards
D Swan 119
D Martin 92
M Bontempelli 87
R Gray 81
T Mitchell 36
L Franklin 0
Bench of J Steele 65 (Emergency for Franklin), and J McGrath 0.
Well, one swan in our forward line clearly did well, only it was the bloke with the surname, not the blokes in red and white. Dustbin and Bonts were serviceably average, while Gray was below par. Titch in green wasn't good, but Buddy pulling out for being too scared to face the tall-defender-less Eagles was absolutely terrible. Luckily we had some steel to strengthen the side, but not enough to drop Titch to the pine, especially in the death timeslot.

Total points lost this week was 65. Down back and in the mids, plus a couple on a captain. We didn't pick them though, so we live with the coldness of it... thanks eski.

Trades
We made two trades this week, dropping Lever, who we thought was underperforming, and Dumont, who hasn't taken the field in a few weeks, and doesn't look like taking it anytime soon. In their place we brought in Malceski, and put him straight on the field, and Knight, who sat on the pine. Unfortunately, Eski was the worst of the three scoring players, and the only one we had on the field, in place of another underperformer in B Smith. All up our trades this week netted us $32,700 in team value, and 4 potential points, but -54 actual points scored.
For the year we're nearly 4,000 potential points infront, and a total of just over $800,000 in team value in the black! The biggest points gains have been Bartel to Swan and Salem to Parker, both netting us over 900 points each, while the Wines to B Smith trade continues to burn us the most, by 336 points.

Looking Forward to Round 18
Like many teams, we have to find someone to trade in for Gazza. Fortunately for us all, his last few weeks have been pretty good, so he's still quite valuable, so much so infact that there's no restriction in who anyone can trade in for him! Furthermore, if Beams doesn't get up, we might have to show him the door too, but he's also worth more than $600k, so its basically free range!
Come and join us in the donor forum to help decide if we keep Beams, and who we bring in for Ablett.