Glory be, it’s the 3rd week of the AFL bye round and it’s a big one: Adelaide out, Collingwood out, not to mention Essendon, Melbourne, West Coast and Hawthorne also having a break this round, possibly off to sun themselves somewhere nicer than wintery Australia.
Which while nice for all the players and coaching staff involved in reality, you can imagine the merry hell this causes for anyone playing AFL Supercoach at the moment, possibly wondering what to do with the gaping big holes suddenly formed in this week’s line up..
Well I was until I started to shuffle the deck chairs around on the titanic..
6 teams out in the latest AFL Bye Round means a very quiet Feed the machine locker room..
-I’m three demons down at the moment including the high scoring Gawn, the average scoring Hunter and the slightly disappointing Lever. Luckily I did prepare a backup for a possible ruck replacement and as timing would have it, backup McInerney can play in Gawn’s spot.
-Losing Gawn was bad enough, but Pendlebury is out too possibly enjoy some cocktails next to some crystal blue water somewhere on a luscious stretch of sand. So now that’s two high scoring FTM guns out of action this week. If MacCrae also had a spell this round, I’d be throwing in the towel early.
-Martin from the Bombers played very well last week for me with a stonking 139 points (his best all season) but can I use him this week? No, no I cannot. Thanks AFL bye round for making things truly intere- chaotic.
-Which just leaves Scholl as my sixth and final player out of action this week, creating a rather sizeable black hole in my midline. Oh dear.
But luckily I had a spare five minutes and a some fairly flexible players which means..
This AFL Bye Round hole suddenly doesn’t seem so large
It’s times like these (thanks Foo Fighters) where dual zone players really shine. Players like Byrne-Jones, Wanganeen-Milera and the other Bynes who can be swapped around into their other roles, freeing up more accessible swaps.
Yes they may score less in their new zones depending on where they play over the weekend but at least they may score something which is better than nothing really.
And now that I’ve done this and made as many possible shifts as I can, I’m only two players short being Hunter and Sholl in the middle. And I can either play with two down or continue to tinker further and see who’s available to strap on the boots on the free market list.
Actually who am I kidding? That’s exactly what I’m going to do!
You go there, you come here, out you go and you come in
It’s been redneck backyard mechanics so far swapping bits and pieces all over the deck but there’s still a gap. And if I didn’t win last week, I’d probably ignore it. But I did win, it felt good, I’d like to do it again so let’s fill that hole!
And so in my usual ‘boot the low rankers out for someone still hanging on as a free agent’ type of bizo, we’ve sent a couple of players packing and picked the best of the pile that’s left. Which unsurprisingly was very barren..
At the expense of Lever and someone else who’s name escapes me at the moment, in comes Aish and Shiels. Aish from the Saints is having a pretty good year, Shiels not so much. But it does me I’m playing with a full deck this AFL bye round and that’s something I didn’t think was going to be possible. And since I’m fond of likening things to cars (I do have my other blog Drive Another Day of course) then this AFL Bye Round I’m actually entering a car that does have all the necessary parts, like wheels and engine and maybe an occasional door.
But wait, my opponent does too..
I was hoping Matt from Matt’s Crows would be having some major issues filling gaps, but it looks not to be the case which makes it even and even Stevens in this game usually ends up in disastrous results for yours truly.
But hey, we scraped in a win last week so let’s see if that fortune continues this round! Wish me luck!
Twas a bold strategy Cotton, did it pay off for me?
Pfft. Of course not!
Heeney didn’t play.
Hogan didn’t play.
And then even worse, new recruit Aish failed to show up!
What’s worse is that we go into another AFL bye round again next week and I’ve just noticed that I don’t have a forward line. Yep, not a single on ready to strap on the boots.
Because of that, I’ll probably romp it in now!