Rate Nat's Ratbags

[NatTheRat1]

Hello, I am new here and new to DT and starting my homework early! :-)

First post!  Woohooo!

Backs: C. Cornes, P. Burgoyne, D. Wojcinski, J. Blake, L. Fisher, R. Petterd, N. Suban (A. Rance, J. Trengrove)

Mids: J. Bartell, D. Swan. M. McVeigh, B. Cousins, A. Proud, P. Haselby (S. Hill, D. Rich/P. Dangerfield - one to be omitted)

Rucks: D. Cox, T. Simmons (M. Leuenberger, T. Vickery)

Forwards: D. Petrie, J. Roughead, C. Rioli, M. Clark, P. Veszpremi, A. Davey, C. Yarran (S. Gumbleton, H. Ballantyne).

How am I going so far?

[ryz.]

get rid of petrie in the forward line imo, perhaps in ruck

boot leigh fisher, running like a machine but probably wont play for who knows why, and blake as he is a spud.

piss off rioli as hes not going to average much more than his price already is at, and mitch clark is gonna be a jet, but too inconsistent and most likely wont score high, spec playing forward with browndog and braddles

i like the rough, hope he smashes buddy this year and kicks 400 haha but too many kids in the forward line, get rid of either 1 of swan bartell and mcveigh, possibly 2, for cheaper kids like gibbs or boak or cotch etc.

bit of work but only my opinion, i went the cousins hazey double too at the moment, hopefully she comes off

[NatTheRat1]

Cheers for the tips!  Yeah, it's still a work in progress!

And I'm not too happy with the forwards either... back to the drawing board lol

[ryz.]

haha np, as i said just my opinion

also i would ditch wojak too, and stick with danger and rich, get rid of hill as they recon hes not ready yet.

also, spent way too much money on the rucks

as i said perhaps downgrade one of your 3 mids i mentioned for slightly cheaper boys, and piss off either cox or simmo, and definately loooona, apparently not back for a while and is expensive.

had him last year thinking i was a genius and he kicked me in the sac weekly.

maybe turn cox to petrie
swan to gibbs
clark to lucas
leuna to some cheap ass ruckman, like....cheap, vick can step in hopefully at some stage
petrie in forwards maybe replace with a solid bloke like roo or pav?
mcveigh still a little iffy, love him, think hes a jet, but he does alot lol and last year missed quite a bit of footy

just mix and match bro

[NatTheRat1]

Hey again.

Here's how it is looking now.

Backs: C. Cornes, M. Mattner, C. Newman, J. Macdonald, M. Brown (WCE), R. Petterd, N. Suban (J. Grimes, A. Rance)

Mids: J. Bartell, B. Gibbs, T. Boak, B. Cousins, P. Haselby, T. Cotchin (D. Rich, P. Dangerfield)

Rucks: D. Petrie, T. Simmons (N. Naitanui, T. Vickery)

Forwards: M. Pavlich, J. Roughead, S. Lucas, D. Headland, P. Veszpremi, A. Davey, H. Ballantyne (S. Gumbleton, C. Yarran).

Still not happy with it though.  Mitchell Brown from WCE has supposedly been towelling up Darren Glass at training and could play back or forward.  Big risk though.  I think it's 'starting' to look okay.

Think I'm happy with the mids and ruck division, just the forwards and backs I'm really not sure about.

[dzeRnumbrd]

Good stuff:

* Mids look nice - maybe a tad too premium
* On field rucks look nice

Average stuff:

* Lose Macdonald
* Naitanui/Vickery may not get early games
* You have to hope *two* of Brown/Suban/Grimes/Rance will play (iffy)
* MBrown / Gumby are KPP and they don't usually go that well (points wise) early in their career
* m0nty has talked about likelihood of Rance playing
* Bartell is not necessarily a value pick - good captain option though, along with Pavlich
* Possible over exposure to injury prone players: Brown, Cousins, Haselby, Lucas, Davey, Gumbleton, Headland, etc

Some ideas to play with:

* Possibly too much exposure to injury returning players - I won't suggest removing any of them but keep it in mind when making further adjustments.

* Possibly too much exposure to new, tall KPP players (Brown/Gumby) - m0nty has covered this in his blogs.  Gumby will probably get games though going by what Knights said.

* Almost definitely too much money on bench rucks - I would lose Nait and look at Currie/Orreal/White from Sydney (the worst kept secret in DT land)

* Some people are running a $72k rookie (dead money) as their 4th ruck - because they think they won't ever use 4th as an emergency nor as a cash cow, so it is dead money anyway - so better to be $72k dead money than $90k dead money.

* You could try reducing Bartell to a 'value' premium (one who you think will score better this year than last year but still avg enough to be a captain option).  Could get back $80-100k doing that.

* Further reduce 2nd ruck (Simmonds or Petrie) to a value ruck option - move money into deficient areas

* Try applying extra money to upgrade rookie backs to mid pricers or upgrade one of the injury prone mid pricer forwards to a premium

Anyway, just some ideas to play with, this isn't gospel -- your team could be perfect for all anyone knows ;)

[NatTheRat1]

Some great advice again, thanks.

I'd actually already started re-jigging the backs and forwards and I did decide to downgrade on Bartell.  Pav will have to be captaining this Titanic.

Straight swap of Bartell for Selwood.  I would have thought Selwood still had some improvement left in him.  But yeah, still open to suggestions lol.  NickNait for Currie in the rucks.

In the backs I'm still performing radical spudectomies as I am given more and more information from the gurus.  I mean, I get 'IT': that you choose (in DT) the stat sponges, and I've got a good idea of who those blokes are, but don't let anyone tell you this is 'easy'.  ROFL

I've been tearing my hair out (what's left of it) trying to look into my crystal ball.  I'll be watching pre-season with WAY more interest this year.  And keeping my ear to the ground.  I'm sure my 'team' will change 400 times between now and the opening bounce, but thanks for the advice.  It all helps.

[ryz.]

damn straight, making the team here means nothing, listen to what dze, some good stuff in there that will keep you on your toes. just remember that as you said, youll change your team a billion times before the first bounce, so keep your remaining hair for a bit longer mate, start making some lists of the guys your intrested in NAB cup and for other reports along the way

im too lazy to do that but i have a fair idea of the guys im looking at, but yeah, that second team you got looks much better. even look at swapping selwood too.

as dze said, keep one of the rucks a dud guy, most likely never use him, and if so, most likely wont score well anyway. also perhaps trying getting rid of either hazelby or cous for someone like a masten type if you are concerned with the ?'s on those types of guys, im looking hard at gumby too, big raps on him being a jet, and we only want him to string together a few decent games, get some money and then pick up browndog at round 9 when hes hit the wall or something haha

looking alot more solid but :)

[NatTheRat1]

as dze said, keep one of the rucks a dud guy, most likely never use him, and if so, most likely wont score well anyway. also perhaps trying getting rid of either hazelby or cous for someone like a masten type if you are concerned with the ?'s on those types of guys, im looking hard at gumby too, big raps on him being a jet, and we only want him to string together a few decent games, get some money and then pick up browndog at round 9 when hes hit the wall or something haha

looking alot more solid but :)

Wasn't Masten also injured?  He'd be another one to watch though.  This 'watchers' list is getting longer.  In Selwood's swap I went for Amon Buchanan.  Good move?

Backs and forwards now look pretty different.  Backs I am happy with, apart from questions over M. Warnock (Melb), I think. 

I might have to take another look at Lucas with the four talls strategy Knights was talking about, but I think there might be points there, if he can stay fit.  I mean, the guy is/was a jet and he's just too cheap to ignore.  And I've slotted Henschel in for the same reason, and he's also a risk.  So many question marks!  Arrrgghhh!

Full team:

Backs: Mattner, C. Cornes, C. Newman, J. Waite, S. Selwood, M. Warnock, R. Petterd (J. Grimes, N. Suban)

Centres: B. Gibbs, T. Boak, A. Buchanan, T. Cotchin, B. Cousins, P. Haselby (P. Dangerfield, D. Rich)

Rucks: D. Petrie, T. Simmons (D. Currie, J. Tippett)

Forwards: Pavlich (c), Lucas, Reimers, S. Higgins, J. Porplyzia, Vezpremi, Hentschel (Ballantyne, Yarran)

Also, I have 20k left over.  Any suggestions?  I realise it's a risky strategy (so many injury prone players) but I'm in the No. 3 Noobs league so I'm entitled to stuff up lol.  But given a lucky run with injuries, I could smash it lol.  Are there any others besides the injury-prone players who I might upgrade?

[dzeRnumbrd]

You're reaching the stage where your team is close to the 'model' team that most people are using.  So any changes now are only going to be small incremental improvements (or us giving away our smokies! :-X).

Petrie may be playing a different role next year, so careful there - watch pre-season to see where he's playing and what his scores are like compared to last year.

Masten had some problems but has apparently stacked on quite a bit of muscle.  Should play 22 games if fit I would reckon.  'fit?' is the question - 'no idea' is my answer.

Scott Selwood, probably an improver, but will Worsfold play him for 22 games?  Getting 0's sucks arse.

Porplyzia is good DT scorer for sure, but very injury prone.  It might be worth the risk of getting Cousins/Haselby/Coughlan/Rusling when injury prone because they've got massive potential upside in their prices (if they can stay fit for 5 minutes).  Porps is $370k so nowhere near as much upside in the price and you're still taking the risk of him going down with injury.  Lose:Lose situation.  If you're going to pick injury guys, make sure they've got massive upside potential.

The game is all about buying players whose last year's price does not reflect this years anticipated performance, while also factoring in how many games they'll play (due to selection risk + injury risk).

So when you ask 'Is Amon a good move?' -- I would ask you, 'do you think he'll score more than last year?  Why do you think that?'  If you think he will score more, then yes he's a good buy -- if not then keep looking & rebalancing your team until you get a good combo you are happy with.

I am leaning towards selecting Joel Selwood after reading a thread on BigFooty today (or yesterday? can't remember).

Newbie tip -> You can have many 'model' teams on FanFooty, but don't make multiple ones on the official AFL/VirtualSports website because people will totally cane you.

Read all of m0nty's blog posts and all the recent BigFooty Dream Team threads, lots of information in there.

[NatTheRat1]

Thanks hugely, mate.  Nice to think I get a tick for this (well, you know) as yeah it's my first go.  And yeah, I'm still TOTALLY scouring the blogs/news/rumours and even planning to head down to Lion's training rofl!

Still a work in progress and yeah I know I'm kind of exposed injury-wise but it's way more fun and easy/complicated (!) than I thought.

It's makin me think which is always good.

Thanks for the feedback!  And yeah probably won't update here again as I'm looking around and seeing other noobs copying what I'm doing!  ROFL

;-)

Nat

[ryz.]

haha if you get down to training, check out leuna and charman for me bro! and first line of what dze said, your on par now :) just gotta put in your own boys you think will fire!

gj mate, sit tight till NAB then get ready haha

[NatTheRat1]

Cheers!  And will do! lol

(Also gonna be taking a VERY close look at Albert and seeing if he's 'in the thick of it'.)

But yeah, sitting tight now and HANGING FOR FOOTY!

[ryz.]

we all are...worst part of the year....cricket should be on daily and/or afl replays should be shown all day, not at 130 at night....

[NatTheRat1]

BRING BACK FOX FOOTY CHANNEL!!!