Team: Shermangetti
Coach: Hodges
Competition: Dream Team
As at round: 4
Ranking: 5921
Money Left: $42800
Backs: Heath SHAW, Jed ADCOCK, Lindsay GILBEE, Brendan GODDARD, Grant BIRCHALL, Justin KOSCHITZKE, Xavier ELLIS, Matt RIGGIO
Centres: Daniel KERR, Chris JUDD (C), Nick DAL SANTO, Marc MURPHY, Luke HODGE, Ryan GRIFFEN, Bryce GIBBS, Joel SELWOOD
Rucks: Aaron SANDILANDS, Ben HUDSON, Luke DARCY, Jonathon GRIFFEN
Forwards: Brad JOHNSON, Matthew PAVLICH, Nathan BOCK, Brendan FEVOLA, Lance FRANKLIN, Alwyn DAVEY, Tom HAWKINS, Aaron EDWARDS, Matt CAMPBELL
This is a pretty strong team, as it ought to be if it was decent to start with and has had up to 6 trades to make it flawless. The lack of Joel Bowden and Chad Cornes is good because they have had very slow starts to the year, though Luke Hodge must be giving him the irrits. However, given his ranking of almost 6000 I get the distinct impression that he probably had The Chad and/or J-Bo and has traded them away already.
The only structural flaw I can see is that he is going to have to make up a lot of ground in the forwards to get enough guns. My personal preference is to take your chances on rookies and mid-tier players in the centres, because the depth in all price tiers is far greater there. Are there going to be enough decent rookies to trade Franklin, Davey, Hawkins, Edwards and Campbell down for in weeks 6-12 to get your guns and still leave you with bench cover? I am impressed with Gibbs on the bench, but he really should be in the 22 so that tells me the centres are too top-heavy and short cuts have been taken elsewhere.
I’m going to give this team 8.5/10, with -1 for starting two rookie forwards and -0.5 because that ranking indicates that this team probably sucked pretty hard in rounds 1 and 2. There is a good solid base for growth in the future, so if Hodges can hold off on the trades for a while he should see some good results.
