It’s not just who you play, but when you play them. The Soldiers lost to the Roughnecks round 1, but scored more than the Chiefs. Round 2 the Soldiers lost to the Chiefs, but scored more than the Roughnecks. Both rounds the Soldiers had the fourth highest score in the league, and their opponent was top. Is it time to questions the Soldier’s defence?
Drafting from the AFL team you support can provide double the joy. With pick 37 in this year’s draft, Mark went to the Cat and found Gryan Miers to add to his forward mix. While his round 1 performance wasn’t anything you’d write home about (44), Mark kept the faith and was greatly rewarded with a ton in the forward line this week. Given the Cats thrashing of Hawthorn on Friday night, Mark would have already been excited, but the bonus joy of Miers being the one to do it is a hard feeling to top.
Emergencies are worth a fortune. It seems like old news already this year writing about an injury to a Roughneck, but at least with a 20% time on ground threshold, there is still a chance to put up a better score than the walking wounded provides. While in this case it wasn’t the deciding factor in the game, I continue to watch the league matchups as the league progresses (maybe with more injuries due to COVID), and if this does come back to aid someone).
The right (or wrong) draft picks can shape your season right from the start. Round 1 Max didn’t play one of his top 2 picks (Snelling at 7), so this week due to much mocking (I assume from Mark at the office), both took the field. While they are both a decade younger than S. Higgins (drafted at 9), and this team is certainly rebuilding, you cannot help but wonder what they missed out on when Higgins got within 1 point of beating them combined. The season is still young, but my eyebrows are yet to move from the top of my hairline at those selections.
Starting the right way is the best way to shut the doubters up. I’m sure Nelson was more than a little upset at the pre season polls having him on the bubble of missing finals back to back years, and so the fire he has come into the season with is not to be questioned. A top 5 score both weeks so far and a win over last years premier shows that we may have underestimated the Hobbits, much as Gandalf constantly warns against this very action.
Drafting rookies has long term gain, but short term pain. It’s round 2, and we’ve already seen depth issues at Dusty HQ. Lots of desirable talent to build a future list around here, however with injuries to some, and rookies not always given the opportunities, we are seeing here how Jaye might struggle to field a full 22 plus emergencies every week. A strategy for the chance to draft top end talent again, or will we see some list moves to try and progress this year?
Partial lockouts used right set a game up perfectly. MaherShalalHashBaz took full advantage of the partial lockout this week with Phillips and Daicos (seriously – Daicos???) both achieving scores on the bench for Jordan that he had no hesitation in using them as his emergency scores to get a good boost on Paul for his matchup. While the match was not too close, this showed that any edge that can be taken, will be by this team looking to go back to back before the list needs a complete overhaul.
Depth at every position is key. A round 1 injury to Kreuzer was mostly offset by the gap between rounds 1 and 2, however the fact he wasn’t right to play this week left Paul a man down against a fellow team aiming to feature deep in finals again. Usually these injuries hit him in July, so is this a turning of fortunes with early injuries and a healthy list for finals? I’m sure Paul will be hoping so, as will his entire list.
Youth might be overrated. A top 3 score for the league this week for Greg, and 3 of his 5 top players are 30 or older. While youth is highly fancied in the draft, and a determining factor in several list decisions come culling time each February, Greg has stuck with his older guys (you can each insert your own joke here about our oldest coach having the oldest team) and received due reward. Goldy with the big ton rounded out a weekend that featured the disappointment of the Eagles losing to the Suns (yes, I did double check that fact), but with Rocky and Shuey both getting handy scores that night there was at least a slight silver lining. Question is will this old list get him a premiership before riding off into the sunset, or will it be in vain.
The Vipers aren’t as far away as preseason surveys indicated. While they were put to the sword by an impressive Kiwi team, the Vipers did score higher than 3 other teams, including the Defenestrators widely tipped to be a top 2 team. At this time there doesn’t seem to be many names on that list that jump out as players that opposition teams will lose sleep over, however the collective score isn’t bad, and given the age profile of the list, we could see some big strides as the season progresses.