Bench Keepers

[jfitty]

Is the idea of having 'bench keepers' a strategy that many of you guys are going for this season? I know last year a fair amount of teams had guys like Danny Stanley, David Swallow and Zac Smith on their benches all year, which made all the injuries and byes during the finals a hell of a lot easier to deal with.

This year you could almost do the same thing with players like Marty Clarke, Dylan Shiel and Jon Giles, but is it a feasible option? I guess the difference between this year and last year was the extra players on the bench (made it easier to hold onto 1 player in each position) and obviously the weekly byes meant that you almost needed a decent bench player to put on the field every few weeks.

Will you be attempting this strategy this year? Or is it too hard now that we have less bench players and less trades?

[JamSainter]

If Giles is averaging more than Cox at the moment and can continue to do so he'll be more than a bench sitter that is for sure!! :P
But yeah I'm looking at the BigO and Smedts as permanent bench keppers.

[Torress]

i'm considering riding jmac/horsley as M6 for the rest of the year. depends, NDS might be too cheap to pass on soon!

marty clarke could be a keeper - all the maggies injuries helps him and he can play a few roles.

if i had lake/hargrave i'd probably keep.

if the rucks keep going down giles could be it!

bench keepers are feasible - i guess you juggle cows and keepers all season. last year i ended up having sylvia and heppel riding my pine as D/M and F/M players. and slvia did awsome getting rubbed out after a 150!!!!!!!!!!!
so rather than say have a rookie as your cover, my plan is to bring in a cheapish mpp to cover. i was actually thinking sideass would be that player for me at the start of season but he is scoring well with all the outs at collingwood.

[Locinator]

+1 on Lake and Clarke! Have them both and will be B6 and B7 all the time now. Might slip Beau Waters or Scotty Thompson in as B5 as I need a R11 premium back.

Also will be keeping Giles and Cogs (Will play all games and score D.swallow like numbers now)

[Hawks_1976]

Here is the deal.

Anyone who is serious about their team will head into the byes with a 8/11/11 structure, use 6 trades during R12 & 13 and cop 2 donuts as a best case scenario. Likely to be a couple more donuts than that, considering that over 50% of teams have Redden and Stephenson on their ruck bench not playing.

This means that your bench keepers will be the R11 bye players that got you through R12 & 13.
Likely that many teams will still have some GWS players, Zorko and seeking downgrades during R12 like S.Gibson, Sierakowski, Darley, Kerridge, Buntine, Clifton, Dick, Stevens etc.

It's likely that these guys would become bench keepers because if you have traded aggressively during the byes you will only have 8-10 trades left. But their cash at some stage, especially closer to finals, will become critical.