The Trading Room - Round 16

The final bye week is finally upon us. 5 weeks of byes has been testing, and this week is one of the hardest with popular players from Brisbane, GWS, Essendon and Geelong all unavailable.

Most of us are now making our last upgrades and the biggest priority right now is to make sure your team is in as good a shape as possible for the r17 when we return to best 22 for the remaining games.

There will be many teams who have been scoring great in these best 18 rounds, who haven’t planned well for best 22, so there is still time to make significant ground on the competition if you are set up well. 

There will also be teams (like mine) who are very low on trades, so injuries and cover will play a significant role in how well you finish the year. 

My advice this week is, don’t panic about your r16 score, it’s better to have your team well set up for r17 onwards than worry about whether you are getting a massive score this week.

This is the last of our strategy weeks before most will sit and wait for injury trades from here. The biggest decision we are faced with is whether to use trades now or hold for injuries. 

So I’ll give a few scenarios below and how I would recommend you approach this week. Many of us are probably in multiple categories:

• You have 3-6 trades left but still need to upgrade 1-2 rookies to finish your team 

People in this group (like me) are now forced with their last decision. Use 3 trades and be at the mercy of the SC Gods when it comes to injuries or hold a few trades and field 1-2 rookies.

This comes down to personal preference, if you are playing for leagues as well as overall, I would use your ladder position to guide you a bit here. If you are safe in your top 4, perhaps leave 3-4 trades in the bank. If you are in 5th to 8th, check matchups and let that help you decide. If you are 9th and below I would say trade hard, you have to win, trades later probably aren’t helping you anyway if you miss finals. No guts no glory!

• You are tossing up between having 3 trades and a Tom McCarthy at flex vs 2 trades and D Tom McCarthy at M9/D6

People in this group have a tough decision to make. I am also in this category and I’m making the choice between using the extra trade to hold Sheldrick at M8 and McCarthy at M9 vs holding the extra trade and using McCarthy at flex. I think I’m leaning to using the extra trade, holding 2 only but having both Sheldrick and McCarthy. The biggest risk for me in having McCarthy at flex is if he gets injured or scores rubbish in the next few weeks he is $99k so what will you do if you’ve got 3 trades, no money in the bank and McCarthy is not longer playing or viable? It’s season over. To me that’s too risky for a rookie to carry that burden.

• You have only 3 trades and still need to make upgrades because you’ve overspent on great scorers like Jackson and Grundy

This is just the reality, if your team's strength is the scoring of its best 18, but best 22 has a rookie or two exposed, I would probably keep trading, only hold 1 trade and make the best of the last 2-3 trades you possibly can. This is equivalent to an F1 driver not pitting and hoping their fuel is enough to make the finish, even though they know it’s probably not. But it is what it is now, just cross your fingers and hope that rookie or two can score ok while your premos keep saving you.

• You are only playing for leagues, not overall

If this is you, there is an opportunity to keep trades in the bank and make this your key competitive advantage and hope for injury carnage later and your opponents are stuck with donuts. Like mentioned earlier though, where you are on the ladder is important. If you are safe in finals, this strategy is fine, if you are desperate for wins though, you need to weigh up whether this strategy will backfire.

In this weeks Trading room I’m going to do something a little different. Instead of buy, hold and sell, which is almost redundant now. I’m going to list who I would love to have as my final team. This will help with who you should “buy” this week anyway.

The other thing I will do is list a few commonly owned players that I would consider “selling” 

Defenders - 

The 6 defenders I would like to own for the run home, if I had the choice right now are:  

• Max Holmes, Jack Sinclair, Nasiah Wanganeen- Milera, Lachie Whitfield, Lachie Ash, Jordan Clark

Next best 5 - Bailey Dale, Harry Sheezel, Callum Mills, Connor Rozee, Dayne Zorko, 

Bench cover - Bo Allan (def / mid) and a dead rookie 

Midfielders - 

The 8 Midfielders, I would like to own for the run home, if I had the choice right now are:  

• Marcus Bontempelli, Zak Butters, Nick Daicos, Ed Richards, Hugh McLuggage, Tom Green, Caleb Serong, Jordan Dawson 

Next best 5 - Andrew Brayshaw, Noah Anderson, Isaac Heeney, George Hewett, Finn Callaghan

Bench cover - Tom McCarthy (mid / def), dead rook (mid / fwd), Manni Liddy 

Rucks - 

The 2 rucks I would like to own for the run home, if I had the choice right now are:  

• Tristan Xerri and Brody Grundy 

Next best 5 - Max Gawn, Darcy Cameron, Jarrod Witts, Tim English, Rohan Marshall

Bench cover - dead rook (fwd / ruck) 

Forwards - 

The 6 forwards I would like to own for the run home, if I had the choice right now are:  

• Luke Jackson, Nic Martin, Bailey Smith, Sam Darcy, Christian Petracca, Jack Macrae 

Next best 5 - Jason Horne-Francis, Izak Rankine, Chad Warner, Liam Baker, Caleb Daniel

Bench cover - Tom McCarthy (mid / def), dead rook (mid / fwd), Manni Liddy 

Flex - 

I would love to have one of these 3 options for my flex 

• One of the DPP players I didn’t include in the 22 - JHF or Rozee

• A third premo ruck - Brody Grundy 

• The next best Midfielder - Andy Brayshaw or Noah Anderson 

Sell : 

Some premos I’d consider selling if you can are : 

• Zach Merrett - moving all over the place and inconsistent, cops the tag. Horrible fixture and the Bombers are struggling. He’s one I definitely would consider trading out.

• Lachie Neale - similar to Merrett, Lachie Neale is just underperforming too regularly and if you can trade him on his bye this week, do it.

• Max Gawn - only if you need his cash to finish your team

• TDK - shared the ruck duties with Shittonet this week, if that continues he needs to go

• Chad Warner - he’s a rollercoaster, we knew that. If you can trade him it’s fine, but we are probably stuck now.

• Shai Bolton - again we knew what we were getting with Shai, he’s spending too much time forward, he was great value when purchased but if you can move him on definitely do.

Good luck with your trades this week, use your trades wisely and consider what impact each one has on your final stretch. You want the best team possible when it gets back to best 22 in Round 17.