NRL Fantasy 2023 Part 3 - Trials by Combat

Welshy wrote:

Haas Doueihi mate found the funds, Burton was on the bench but Ive thrown EganButcher in now

Nice!

Mulvy wrote:

Also, I haven't been able to make a draft which has Tapine in it. The only way I see it happening is if he comes in for Cotter instead. Both are good picks. Hopefully no injuries this weekend to decide it for me.

Honestly Tapine is probably better than Cotter - no Origin and an insane ceiling (can score 90+ even without a try), while Cotter plays Origin and while he has a very high floor, his ceiling is not as high (highest ever score is 71, realistically his ceiling is 65-70).

Only real benefit of Cotter is that he's cheaper and has no byes before Origin time, though Tapine's bye schedule is decent too (misses round 8 but plays 2/3 big bye rounds)

Bethany_B wrote:

Honestly Tapine is probably better than Cotter - no Origin and an insane ceiling (can score 90+ even without a try), while Cotter plays Origin and while he has a very high floor, his ceiling is not as high (highest ever score is 71, realistically his ceiling is 65-70).

Only real benefit of Cotter is that he's cheaper and has no byes before Origin time, though Tapine's bye schedule is decent too (misses round 8 but plays 2/3 big bye rounds)

Thanks for the reply and good points. They're both really talented and huge work rate. Tapine been around for years and now hitting peak you would think. I don't think we can really judge Cotter's ceiling just yet. I'd like both ideally.

But regardless, I want to touch on the point of "he's cheaper and has no byes before Origin time"

We get 44 trades this year right? heaps of byes, multiple trades. You're not even able to spend them as easily in the first half of the year. I would consider anyone with no byes in the foreseeable future to be "good byes", and worry about the rest with your gazillion trades on a needs basis. If a "sub-gun" with "good byes" (ie no byes until approaching the origin period) can make it to almost keeper status, it gives you points and stability and a little cash. Less cash than you ideally want from a cash cow. But then we talk about sideways trading over origin. It's not a lot different.

Current draft as of now with 24k spare….

Mahoney
Tapine Cotter Uto
E. Butcher Garner
Cleary Burton
Hammer I. Thompson
Miller CNK Perham

Cheese Boyd Hopgood Loiero
Doorey Alamoti Sloan Smith Shields/Talau


Would’ve liked to fit in Haas or E. Katoa but could not quite. If word comes out Angus is back sooner than we expect I’ll slot Katoa in and upgrade Cotter to Haas.

Rabbits21 wrote:Current draft as of now with 24k spare….

Mahoney
Tapine Cotter Uto
E. Butcher Garner
Cleary Burton
Hammer I. Thompson
Miller CNK Perham

Cheese Boyd Hopgood Loiero
Doorey Alamoti Sloan Smith Shields/Talau


Would’ve liked to fit in Haas or E. Katoa but could not quite. If word comes out Angus is back sooner than we expect I’ll slot Katoa in and upgrade Cotter to Haas.

Looks a GUN or 2 short to me mate

Mulvy wrote:

Thanks for the reply and good points. They're both really talented and huge work rate. Tapine been around for years and now hitting peak you would think. I don't think we can really judge Cotter's ceiling just yet. I'd like both ideally.

But regardless, I want to touch on the point of "he's cheaper and has no byes before Origin time"

We get 44 trades this year right? heaps of byes, multiple trades. You're not even able to spend them as easily in the first half of the year. I would consider anyone with no byes in the foreseeable future to be "good byes", and worry about the rest with your gazillion trades on a needs basis. If a "sub-gun" with "good byes" (ie no byes until approaching the origin period) can make it to almost keeper status, it gives you points and stability and a little cash. Less cash than you ideally want from a cash cow. But then we talk about sideways trading over origin. It's not a lot different.

Yeah that is fair enough, the fact that we have more trades does make it easier to deal with byes (Tapine's is also not early enough to be a big deal), it's more so that I use the lack of early byes (think round 2-6, not so much after that) as a tie-breaking method.

If you do start with Cotter (and don't get me wrong he's a great player and I love him), he's probably a sell over Origin anyway given that he'd miss the 3 Origin weeks, probably is affected in the weeks after Origin if he backs up in those and has a bye in round 15 as well so he misses at least 4 of the 8 games in Origin period (13, 15, 16, 19) and would have to back up from Origin in a further three (14, 17, 20), meaning he has only 1 game out of 8 in that period that is likely not affected by Origin (round 18).

Rabbits21 wrote:Current draft as of now with 24k spare….

Mahoney
Tapine Cotter Uto
E. Butcher Garner
Cleary Burton
Hammer I. Thompson
Miller CNK Perham

Cheese Boyd Hopgood Loiero
Doorey Alamoti Sloan Smith Shields/Talau


Would’ve liked to fit in Haas or E. Katoa but could not quite. If word comes out Angus is back sooner than we expect I’ll slot Katoa in and upgrade Cotter to Haas.

You're inefficiently using money on guys that aren't that good. I would make the following changes:

* Hammer down to Soni Luke and put Alamoti at starting CTR - Alamoti will score just as well if not better and you free up $122k

* CNK down to Khan-Pereira and just play HSS at WFB if you don't want to play AKP, CNK is alright but again, you're paying $142k more for not that many more points.

* Egan Butcher to Teig Wilton - Wilton is likely to start on the edge for the Sharks and actually scored alright even with Wade Graham there as long as he was starting with Wade on the bench. This frees up another $26k

Take that $290k you've just freed up ($314k bank with what you have before) and then do the following upgrades:

* Mahoney to Haas (play Cheese at HOK), this leaves you $138k and gets you a 10 point increase in scoring (Haas is fully fit and should average low 60s, Mahoney probably averages 50-52 at best)

* Cotter to Murray, Murray has a much bigger ceiling than Cotter does and is much more likely to get big enough mins, especially with Havili's injury. Also as a Souths fan you'll have more fun owning him

This leaves you with a stacked MID line while everyone else is messing around with cheapies and middies, and you aren't really giving up much to do it. Your side would look like this:

Cheese
Haas, Murray, Tapine
Wilton, Garner
Cleary, Burton
Thompson, Alamoti
Miller, Perham, HSS

Hopgood, Boyd, Loiero, Uto

Luke, Doorey, Sloan, AKP

Bethany_B wrote:

You're inefficiently using money on guys that aren't that good. I would make the following changes:

* Hammer down to Soni Luke and put Alamoti at starting CTR - Alamoti will score just as well if not better and you free up $122k

* CNK down to Khan-Pereira and just play HSS at WFB if you don't want to play AKP, CNK is alright but again, you're paying $142k more for not that many more points.

* Egan Butcher to Teig Wilton - Wilton is likely to start on the edge for the Sharks and actually scored alright even with Wade Graham there as long as he was starting with Wade on the bench. This frees up another $26k

Take that $290k you've just freed up ($314k bank with what you have before) and then do the following upgrades:

* Mahoney to Haas (play Cheese at HOK), this leaves you $138k and gets you a 10 point increase in scoring (Haas is fully fit and should average low 60s, Mahoney probably averages 50-52 at best)

* Cotter to Murray, Murray has a much bigger ceiling than Cotter does and is much more likely to get big enough mins, especially with Havili's injury. Also as a Souths fan you'll have more fun owning him

This leaves you with a stacked MID line while everyone else is messing around with cheapies and middies, and you aren't really giving up much to do it. Your side would look like this:

Cheese
Haas, Murray, Tapine
Wilton, Garner
Cleary, Burton
Thompson, Alamoti
Miller, Perham, HSS

Hopgood, Boyd, Loiero, Uto

Luke, Doorey, Sloan, AKP

The old it's preseason and you should change your team to look like my team trick

What’s the go with Offa? Have I missed something as he was almost first picked middle last year at Tigers and now not in the squad has he or did he have an injury I have missed? Might impact Uto’s mins or starting spot.

Maestro wrote:What’s the go with Offa? Have I missed something as he was almost first picked middle last year at Tigers and now not in the squad has he or did he have an injury I have missed? Might impact Uto’s mins or starting spot.

Just their team makeup with all their new recruits. Klemmer, iPap and Bateman can all play huge minutes, so there's much less on (pardon the pun) offer for Ofa.

Maestro wrote:What’s the go with Offa? Have I missed something as he was almost first picked middle last year at Tigers and now not in the squad has he or did he have an injury I have missed? Might impact Uto’s mins or starting spot.

He did have an injury. Remember reading a week or two ago that he was training in the rehab group. Wests posters may know more.

Aardvark wrote:

Watch out or I’ll give you the Josh Schuster treatment

Mulvy doesn't understand

Maestro wrote:What’s the go with Offa? Have I missed something as he was almost first picked middle last year at Tigers and now not in the squad has he or did he have an injury I have missed? Might impact Uto’s mins or starting spot.

Tigers website - "Joe Ofahengaue (calf) is also fully recovered but is being rested for Sunday's trial."

I'm a little disappointed that everyone isn't going to be suckered into Matamua

my tv broke wrote:I'm a little disappointed that everyone isn't going to be suckered into Matamua

Stash him and Sadrugu in your 20/21 to save trades for when they come in and kill it, that's what I say.

Does Tapine potentially playing Lock change anything?

I like the big three at mid everyone seems to be running this year, although I have no love for Tapine. You can pick up a lot of value in the edges, and ignore c/wfb - as is tradition.

Anyone flipping that and running some decent centres or fullbacks? Any Teddy/Manu/Latrell enjoyers?

Full disclosure I hate picking gun backs to start the year after Teddy burned me that one time but just curious.

mintotheimmortal wrote:Does Tapine potentially playing Lock change anything?

I am looking for it to give him a 5 minute bump, up to the 55 minutes per game that Elliott was getting last season. A 55 minute average should see him hitting 60.

Really liking both him and Tohu starting at lock.

mintotheimmortal wrote:Does Tapine potentially playing Lock change anything?

The number on his back

Bethany_B wrote:

* Hammer down to Soni Luke and put Alamoti at starting CTR - Alamoti will score just as well if not better and you free up $122k

* CNK down to Khan-Pereira and just play HSS at WFB if you don't want to play AKP, CNK is alright but again, you're paying $142k more for not that many more points.

Just talking about these 2 changes.

Yes you free up a bunch of cash, but you do so by trading out 2 guys with decent job security in a decent position (albeit for not great teams)
And you trade in 2 guys with poor job security and scoring potential. A bench hooker who wasn't even named in his teams 17 for this weekends game, and a rookie winger who may not even start.