I don’t really want to write this. 

I’m still fuming. 

I’m still trying to recover from the SuperCoach weekend that was. Not that I expect you to care about my team at all, but my last seven days in Supercoach-land has hurt big time. 

Down goes Hugh Greenwood. Down goes Lachie Whitfield. Down goes Dustin Martin. Out goes Callum Mills. Out goes Toby Greene. Down goes Josh Kelly. 

I think I’m still in shock. 

I’m more in shock about my team and the sudden turn of events than I am that Melbourne is back in it’s fifth lockdown. Perhaps that’s what is getting to me, another lockdown. I’m comfortable coping the injuries. That’s going to happen. All the injuries happened on the field too, so no worries, I’ll deal with that. What’s tipped me over the edge is losing two players an hour before a match started because of state governments having different policies in relation to isolating. Gee, it’s a hard one to cop. 

I know I need to get over it. I will. Eventually.

As for what happened in the wider SuperCoach landscape, let’s have a look at a few winners from this week. 

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Sam Walsh

With the top score of 193 this weekend, Walsh led the Blues to a win over the Pies. His rolling average for the last three rounds is now an impressive 163. And each of his 55,569 coaches would be well pleased to have him. For those without, it looks like we’ll need to wait until 2022. 

Tom Mitchell

Mitchell led the Hawks this week with an ‘impressive’ draw to Melbourne. This is the kind of score all owners have been waiting for and it’s coming at the right time of the season. His last six outings have all been tons and it will be interesting to see how the fixture falls for him over the coming weeks. 

Sean Darcy

Has there been a more impressive breakout ruck performance than Darcy? His last three weeks have been phenomenal and with only 2.8% ownership it means there are plenty of us missing out on these monster scores. While this week was a sultry 156, he was over the ton at the half and was heading toward somewhere near the 200 mark before having a spell due to injury. Could he be a Gawn or Grundy replacement in 2022? It’s worth pondering. 

Ollie Wines

With a 154 Wines was the fourth highest scorer across the competition. In his last eight matches he’s only been under the ton once, yet I always feel it could go either way with him. He’s certainly a POD option going into finals and the end of the season with 5.7% ownership, but he is $100k more than Dustin Martin so it will take some maneuvering to get him. 

Jamie Cripps

Cripps scored 150 to round out the top five for this week. He’s probably not someone you’d be considering to move in at this stage, he does average 73 and this one looks like one of those out-of-the-box weeks. 

That’s the top five for the week, but the big issues for us centre around two main questions.

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First, who are we going to bring in for Dustin Martin? 

The confirmation that Martin will be out for the rest of the season makes the decision to move him out a no-brainer. And depending on how many trades you have and what kind of cash you’ve got in the bank will depend on who you can go for. 

If you’ve got no cash then you’re probably looking to the likes of Shai Bolton, Sam Menegola, Andrew Gaff, Tim Kelly, Steele Sidebottom, Brayden Fiorini, Jack Viney, or Jaidyn Stephenson. Each of them comes with risk, but could also give good reward depending on the way things go. Some are more midfielders than forwards, so if you can make a DPP move through the Martin trade you also open up a few more options. 

If you have some cash to play with, and for the sake of this scenario let’s go with an extra $50k, then the likes of Cameron Guthrie, David Muncy, Nat Fyfe, Joel Selwood, Hugh McCulggage, Tim Taranto, Rory Sloane, and Nick Hind come into play. 

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Second, and your decision about Dusty is most likely impacted because of this, is how to deal with the moving fixture over the coming rounds? 

As we saw at the end of last week and over the weekend the whole fixture is a moving beast. It’s a little hard to plan more than a week in advance at the moment, perhaps in life as in Supercoach. But to me it doesn’t make much sense worrying about our team until at least Thursday and possibly as late as Friday this week. Every day there is new news about what the AFL are having to deal with and so until things are sorted for the coming weekend let’s hold things loosely. 

Well, that was somewhat cathartic. Rant over. Hope it all goes well for you this coming week!