Dream Team. Round 20, The Semis!

What a match last week! With gaps all over the field, Dal Santo pulling out last minute, captain Bartel playing crap and both ruckman failing..not to mention Franklin!
So what was the outcome?
Lucky for me, Dodgey Fellas also had gaps in the field including their captain!And the VC was SJohnson who had a shocker!
Kneejerkers win by 13 points!
Hell yeah!…..then this weeks team line ups were released….
Hell no!
I have more holes than swiss cheese in my backline again. No Grimes, Geary, Post and Petrenko is an emergency!
What does this mean for this weekends semi final against the Indefatigables?
Well I do have a lot of guns back in the side but 1-2 doughnuts in the back are going to hurt. And with out of form Franklin, SJohnson and unpredictable Russell, I am not overly confident.

DEF: Gilbert, McMahon, Hodge, Drummond, Houlihan and possible Petrenko
MID: Bartel, Dal Santo (vc), Lockyer, Griffen, CCornes, Beams
RUC: McIntosh, Sandilands
FWD: Riewoldt, SJohnson, Didak, Pavlich, Franklin, DThomas, MBrown

Gadget, I hope your Geelong players fail miserably…cept Bartel and SJohnson of course.

Dream Team round 19…the finals!

After a loss last week, I thought I was out of the eight. But it happens that from 6th to 10th all the teams were on 32 points. It came down to the percentage……

And this is where the Kneejerkers excelled! With the 4th highest average in the league I managed to hold sixth place with a percentage of 107.23. JOY!
So it it round 19 in the AFL which makes it the 1st round of finals for Dream Team. As I finished 6th, I play the Dodgey Fellas who finished 7th. There is no second chance, it is a do or die match.
Anxiously I awaited the release of the teams , hoping that my DT was injury free as I have no more trades.
NOOOOO!
I have been hit with injuries again and some big names are out!
Gone – NRiewoldt (my highest averaging forward), JGrimes (my 2nd highest averaging defender), Gilbert still gone (my number 1 defender), Skipworth and even Petrenko can’t get back in.
This leaves me with a big doughnut in my backline and a big offensive gap in my forwards.
Dodgey Fellas looks to have a few missing too but will still field a full team. This is going to be tough.
What I do have going is Dodgey’s players to seem to have a lower average overall to my blokes…but he has a full team….dammit!

DEF: Mcmahon, Hodge, Drummond, Houlihan, Geary, Post
MID: Bartel, Dal Santo, Lockyer, Griffen, CCornes, Beams
RUC: McIntosh, Sandilands
FWD: SJohnson, Franklin, Pavlich, Didak, DThomas, Russell, MBrown

So fingers are crossed that I can get over the line this week. Based on averages, my score does not look pretty. Oh well…see what happens.

Dream Team round 18…

It is the final round of Dream Team before the finals begins and my place is no where near locked in.
I play the I Love Footy team with only 3 losses to their name. The battle for the 6th to 8th position is tight, where only percentage is keeping most teams apart.
If I pull off the win this week, I am into the finals. If I lose this week, it comes down to percentage. With 2 teams vying for the top 8 playing ‘bye’ teams it will be close.
Therefore it is all or nothing for me and my last 2 trades are being used. OUT Higgins who has performed greatly throughout the season, only to get himself injured for 3 weeks, and OUT for PBurgoyne who really has got worse throughout the season. So who comes in?
IN: The Hawks are playing so much better, almost to their Grand final win level so in comes Hodge to bring some run into the backline. IN: To add some selfishness and style to the forwards, here comes Didak which makes my team a little heavy with Collingwood players but it should give me a great score.
Now the problem is, my most consistent defender, Gilbert, is being rested with back soreness and this hurts. This leaves a doughnut in my backline with the only players able to fill it have both been listed as emergencies only. Crap.
The line up:
BACK: McMahon, Hodge, Grimes, Drummond, Houlihan, Post with Geary or Petrenko hopefully filling the gap.
MID: Dal Santo, Lockyer, Bartel(VC), Griffen, CCornes, Beams
RUCK: Sandilands, McIntosh
FWD: Didak, Franklin, Riewoldt(C), Russell, DThomas, SJohnson, Pavlich
Yep, that is it. Hopefully this will give me a score of at least 1924 plus captain which is 200 more than I Love Footy’s average but they do have the Ablett factor.
Oh well, here goes.

The AFL Tanking debacle

It is that time of the season where every man and his dog starts accusing teams of tanking games to get priority draft picks.

What is tanking? Tanking is where a coach pulls their best players from the field (or even the match), match up rookies vs stars and just playing to lose the game so they can get themselves a priority draft pick.

You see, one of the great things about AFL is the draft pick. The teams that finished lowest on the table get the 1st picks, the best teams get the last of the picks. What this does is, makes for a more even competition and each club generally has a success cycle.

What happens at the end of the year, where teams can no longer make the the top 8, some team’s tactics have a very sudden change and most people feel that they are tanking the rest of the season to get that all important pick.

Now if you were a coach and your season was in essence done (cant make top 8 ) would you continue to put players on the field that are carrying niggling injuries? or would you rather rest them, let them heal completely ready for next season and bring in some new faces to get the rookies blooded? If I was a coach, I would.

I just read this “Tanking? Long-term thinking’s ok” and one of they key notes straight away is, if you are in the top 8, guaranteed a finals berth and rested a player, which Geelong has done recently, then that’s ok but if you in the bottom 8, you are tanking.

Last nights AFL Footy Show started talking about the tanking debate and there were calls to changing the draft system to a lottery. Come on, you are kidding right?

As said earlier, one of the great things about our game is the fact that each year, teams are fairly even matched and for the weaker teams, the draft helps them get to be stronger teams.

Oh and just because you have the 1st pick, does not mean you are going to pick the best player. Have a look at Melbourne’s number one pick Jack Watts. Played just 3 games this year and not really making any impact. Compare that to say Brisbane’s Daniel Rich at 7th pick who is probably the favourite for the NAB Rising Star or even North Melbourne’s Jack Ziebell (9th) and Liam Anthony (43rd)

In the end, leave the drafting system alone. If a coach starts to deliberately play to lose, I think the club needs to remove the coach and not put hope on who they will pick up for the next year.

Round 12 Dream Team line up

After the team listing being released yesterday, I had little choice but to make another trade. Say goodbye to Krakouer who was the worst pick up of mine as I picked him up after he made a lot of money and then played very very ordinary. And that made room for the most pick fwd there is in the AFL Dream Team…Lance Buddy Franklin.
Yes, he is only averaging 78 but he has one of the smallest standard diviations and you know he will come good soon.

So my line up for the split round (I have split rounds..not enough footy for 2 weekends):

DEF: S Gilbert, J Geary, S McMahon, P Burgoyne, R Houlihan, J Grimes, J Petrenko.
MID: J Bartel (capt), T Lockyer, N Dal Santo, R Griffen, H Skipworth, B Muston.
FWD: S Johnson, N Reiwoldt (vc), M Pavlich, S Higgins, J Ziebell, D Thomas, L Franklin
RUC: H McIntosh, A Sandilands
Now Pentrenko could be another dougnut but with Drummond out for a week, I’ll just have to cross my fingers.

AFL/DT Round 11…done

I know..its almost round 12 and I am only just getting to round 11 wrap up.
Its my rambling so back off
Round 11 was the worst round for the Kneejerkers Dream Team. Where I thought at the beginning of the round, I was going to have 1 doughnut, Petrenko than falls to the emergency list. I was at 2 dougnuts. Then more strife, Ziebell out with gastro and Drummond does a leg in 1st quarter. This makes my 1 doughnut turn into 4 dougnuts.
Scraps in with a score of 1488 and to my surprise I won my game in my main league and even in the secondary league! This makes 4 wins in a row and a leap to 9th place.

Can’t afford to have so many doughnuts this week so trades are a must. Moss is gone and then who do i drop? Russell or Krakouer? Both have been going down hill with averages of 70.
Who do I pick up? You’ll have to wait.

AFL Dream Team – Round 11

Being offline has not stopped me from putting together a Dream Team for 2009. Made it harder and I have had to do it all via my i-mate mobile phone, but the Kneejerkers are back for their 2nd year.
The line up at the start of the seasn look good but very early long term injuries decimated my team and many…many trades were used early.
Its round 11 this week and I am already down to 5 trades left to get through 11 more rounds.

This week I used up a trade to ditch the useless T Tuck for the Hawks because there was no way I was missing out on B Muston for the hawks. 1st 2 games scores himself an average of 116.50! But this trade has still left me with a doughnut in the midfield.
The Chad going down with a calf injury hurts but I should be fine this week. My backline is also weakened with Gilbert going down with an injury to his ankle.

So far in the Home Brews II league, I have just the 3 wins which places me 11th but I have the 5th highest point average so I am confident I will make the finals this year.

So the Line up this week is:
DEF: J Drummond, J Geary, S McMahon, P Burgoyne, R Houlihan, J Grimes, J Petrenko.
MID: J Bartel (capt), T Lockyer, R Griffen, H Skipworth, B Muston and a doughnut.
FWD: S Johnson, N Reiwoldt (vc), M Pavlich, S Higgins, J Ziebell, D Thomas, M Brown
RUC: H McIntosh, A Sandilands
No my strongest line up. Petrenko and Brown are the weakest links but we shall see how we go.

AFL Dream Team is back!

That’s right! Dream Team for 2009 has opened!
This has taken up most of last night, trying to put the ultimate team together for 2009. And you know what…it bloody hard to get the balance right and not overload the Kneejerkers with North Melbourne players.
I managed to cull it to just 5 (Harvey, Petrie, Hale, Thomas and 1st round draft pick Ziebell). Im quite surprised at the number of Port players I have and how little Hawthorn and Geelong players I have….damn salary cap.

If your keen to battle the might of the Kneejerkers, jump on Dream Team and join league 655560 (Fishmalt).

What’s that Skip?…Cat is down a well?

So close! North Melbourne went down to Geelong tonight by just 13 points! And I couldn’t be happier!
Well I could have, if the Roos had won BUT considering Geelong have beaten the Roos in the last 9 matches by an average of 12 goals. I am stoked.
And what a game! Considering the media (dodgy as they are) had Geelong as their strongest fielded side of the season and North as weak because of them missing their 2 key forwards in Jones and Thompson, I thought the Shinboners did freaking great.
Yes the loss will take us out of the top 8 but tell me that other teams wont start looking at us as serious contenders now.
Meh, what am I saying. No one ever considers the North Melbourne football club as serious contenders =/

Go the Roos! and what a freaking great game it was!

No more Roos for you…

NO! The Kangaroos go down by 11 points to the Bulldogs!
Damn that 9 point goal in the last 2 minutes! Low scoring affair with heat blamed, well they were in Darwin, for the not so fast paced of the game.
And then I get home to see the Tigers lost to the Saints! Gah! Well at least North Melbourne didn’t get a thumping like Richmond (40points)
I think what just tops of the horrible results, is now I must go for Geelong to beat Melbourne tonight. I only get to a few games a year and this year Melbourne is already playing here so I don’t need to see them again.
go cats….go
urgh, now to go wash. That just felt dirty.