You thought the new Princess was big news.
You thought the Mayweather - Pacquiao fight was BIG news.
You'd be wrong.
The biggest news of the weekend was the fact that the TS Donor Team finally got a captain selection correct. Yes, you saw it here first (unless you've already read it in the donor forum ofcourse, in which case, you saw it here second), we put the VC on Pendles, and the bloke scored enough points to not have to think too much about using the loophole - which was good, because our original captain was Goldy!

I'm not going to pretend that we did any better than we actually did, its not like we were top 100 for the week or anything, but this is a big win for us after the past few weeks. Anyway, this past weekend we scored a much more respectable 2,167 points, which placed us at 35,546 for the round. That brings our overall score to 10,273 and has us ranked at 34,352 in the overall season standings.

The round 5 team summary looks a little like this (actually, it looks exactly like the below, but that doesn't have the same ring to it)
Defence:
H Shaw 122
K Kolodjashnij 88
A Saad 85
J Gibson 79
J Newnes 72
B Smith 45
Bench of A Oxley 148 (E) and K McIntosh 70.
To have your highest scoring defender sitting on the pine really hurts, and one of your premiums scoring the lowest of all players onfield doesn't help any. We had the emergency on Oxley, and after his stunning Friday night I was looking for a way to bring his score on the park. Unfortunately all our defenders were playing, so we had no loophole opportunity.
Cheater had a good one, and it fell away from there. We had the same problem last week when Gibson scored well, and no-one else turned up to play. Premiums with less than premium scores is to be expected down back, with a bit of volatility, but Newnes is on really thin ice...
While it wouldn't have been done, picking Oxley over Smith would have earned us an extra 103 points. More realistically, it would have been Oxley over Kolo, so still an extra 60 points there.
Midfield:
S Pendlebury 158 (C, 316)
P Dangerfield 119
D Beams 113
JP Kennedy 105
C Ellis-Yolmen 99
P Cripps 86
A Vandenberg 80
N Krakouer 52
Bench of T Miller 105 (E), I Heeney 0, and J Nelson 0.
There you have it. Like many, we put the VC on Pendles, and were more than happy to take that score of 158. The rest of our midfield premiums did their jobs, each scoring better than 100 points, while the three rookies did everything we expected of them. New recruit Krakouer was a bit of a let-down, only scoring 52, especially seeing as we had Touk on the pine with 105 points to his name. That little move cost us 53 points.
Rucks:
T Goldstein 92
N Naitanui 83
Bench of M Cox 0
We went into the round with Goldy as our original captain selection, and its a good thing Pendles didn't score 119 points or less, otherwise we would have been stuck with a doubled 92. The NicNat 83 was also a little disappointing, especially with the other ruck options out there that we overlooked in initial team selection (namely Blicavs and Grundy).
Forwards:
R Gray 134
D Martin 113
M Bontempelli 100
D Swan 85
J Hogan 49
L McGrath 0 (Captain loophole)
Bench of C Salem 50 (emergency on for McGrath), and M Clark 0.
A welcome return to Mr Gray, leading the forwardline in style, and a welcome back for Mr Martin, after going missing against the Dees last week. Both Hogaaannn and Salem were a little disappointing, but after being beaten by the dull and boring purple peoples, its not unexpected for some low scores. McGrath was the lucky man to be given the symbolic captaincy, allowing Pendles to bring it home for us, but with both him and Clark out injured, there were no points lost, but also no cash generated.

So, all up we had 103 points down back, and 53 points in the mids, or 156 points all up going missing this week. Our captain was our highest scorer, but it would have been like having a whole other Pendles on the field if we got the selections right. The extra 156 would have given us 2,323 points, and had us ranked around the 2,700 mark for the week - a 33,000 place improvement!

Trades:
We only made one trade this week. We dropped N Brown, sent A Saad back to defence (closing the Def-Mid link), and brought in N Krakouer (opening the Fwd-Mid link). After only one round, the trade is a little bit iffy, with Brown outscoring Krak by 33 points (although both should have been on the bench and thus not having an effect on our score), however Krak did make an extra $38,400 for us.
Thus far our round 3 correction trades were a bit of a disaster. Lamb and Blakely, who we dropped, haven't played since, but McGrath and Nelson, who we brought in, have played three out of a possible six games between them, and only made us a little over $90k.
In Round 4 we dropped the injured Bartel and Wines for Swan and Smith. These two trades have given us an extra 281 points, but Smith bleeding cash has cost us in the bank.
For the season sofar, without considering who was actually onfield, the total potential points that we've gained from our 5 trades is only 393, while we're only ahead by $89.5k. You can see the summaries below.
<table border='1' cellspacing='0' cellpadding='0' style='width: 266.5pt; margin-left: 4.65pt; border: none;' align='center]
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<p style='margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: center;]Out

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<p style='margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: center;]In

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<p style='margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: center;]Total Points

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<p style='margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: center;]Total Value



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<td valign='bottom' style='height: 15pt; width: 69.2pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt; border-style: none solid solid none; border-top-color: initial; border-left-color: initial; text-align: left; white-space: nowrap;]
<p style='margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: center;]393

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<p style='margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: center;]89,500



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<p style='margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: center;]T Lamb

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<p style='margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: center;]J McGrath

<td valign='bottom' style='height: 15pt; width: 69.2pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt; border-style: none solid solid none; border-top-color: initial; border-left-color: initial; text-align: left; white-space: nowrap;]
<p style='margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: center;]54

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<p style='margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: center;]47,400



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<p style='margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: center;]C Blakely

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<p style='margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: center;]J Nelson

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<p style='margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: center;]91

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<p style='margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: center;]48,600



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<p style='margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: center;]J Bartel

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<p style='margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: center;]D Swan

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<p style='margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: center;]176

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<p style='margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: center;]24,600



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<p style='margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: center;]O Wines

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<p style='margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: center;]B Smith

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<p style='margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: center;]105

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<p style='margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: center;]-69,500



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<p style='margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: center;]N Brown

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<p style='margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: center;]N Krakouer

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<p style='margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: center;]-33

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<p style='margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: center;]38,400






Now come and join us in the donor forum, and help continue to drive the improvement. There's sure to be some trades this week, so make sure you have your say!