FTM Round 15 – just phone it in

Ugh, another bye round in the AFL that’s caused merry hell for team Feed the Machine. And come the Thursday just gone, I could either plan diligently or phone it in.

No money on which option I took. Although strangely that turned out to be the correct one..

Have I mentioned how much I hate bye rounds in this game?

Yes I get that the players in real life need a spell, god knows I’d like a holiday soon (actually I’ve got one coming up next week come to think of it) and normally outside the world of Supercoach I really wouldn’t care. But in this fantasy football game if you’ve invested heavily in one particular team to form your squad, well you’re going to be paying big time when that team takes a mid season week off.

Or like me, you could be extremely unlucky and have three teams this week sunning themselves in Bali or the like, effectively leaving me with no back line to speak of.
And while I’m not likely to win coach of the year for this (or any sport really, unless there’s a ‘phone it in’ challenge and even then team Guy might steal that one away from me) I’m fairly certain you actually need some kind of defence on the ground, just in case your opponent suddenly gets the idea to kick it over your midfield and run rampant from there.
Of course that’s assuming you have a fully stocked mid field in play, which of course I certainly did not.

No what I had was 2/5ths of a mid line comprising of only St Kilda players because like the back line, I forgot to look into things after the Thursday night game and all of those empty spots stayed empty. Melbourne players who had the week off last week were back in play this week but silly me still had them on the bench, because namely ‘I forgot’ and I couldn’t even achieve ‘phone it in’ status on account of not even checking my phone.

So that’s two players covering the work of 9 spots which isn’t strategic planning at all whether you’re running a fantasy football team or even if you’re a bunch of Spartan’s defending the hot gates from a bunch of invaders really.
Luckily I had a ruck that was active (McInerney who I’d just left in place since last week) and 3/4 of a attacking line.

Still, with those staggering numbers (or more importantly lack thereof) and zero planning this week due to laziness, how could I not going down in an absolute screaming fiery wreck?

Phone it in and still snatch a victory…

I won.

Yes I kid you not, I jagged a win. With a team that was mostly missing, a fully active bench doing nothing whatsoever, no back line at all, an overworked mid line and no hope for anything other than being steamrolled this round. And yet somehow that mass amount of negative turned into a hilarious positive as I opened up the app this morning and got my victory notice.
Yes indeed it was the tinniest phone it in victory I’ve ever had (and will probably ever have from here on in) but I’ll take it.

But how?
Well I didn’t realise that my opponent this week was going to be Guy’s ‘Tipp Doggy Dogg’ group that once upon a time setup a team and then wandered off sometime during the next round to concentrate on life or his podcast business or something leaving his hapless bastards to fend for themselves.

And here I was thinking no one had it worse in the bye round. Well as they say, there’s always someone suffering greater than you are – and here he is!

Behold, the scrappiest, laziest, not even set and forget style phone it in bottom scraping slug fest match up you’ll ever see…and yet I still won. And while I’m still 11th on the ladder (Guy’s 12th), another victory and a bit of luck and I might see 10th before the season’s out.

Now wouldn’t that be something!

In the meantime I’m going back to checking on team sheets and injury reports and some actual study because I know this will be my only phone it in victory for the year. Back to normal business next week!