Went to bed on Sunday with a rank gain and a score I was happy with. Fast forward to lockout ending and some pretty brutal up/downdates for everyone and boom 900 ranks dropped from last week with an 862. Oof.
Lussick 52 - with a try. Anything above his average is a win at this stage. Obviously not a gun, nor a keeper, but I'm glad I didn't bail already.
Hoppy 56 - steady as she goes
Utoikamanu 51 - new recruit, would have taken a 51 going in but feels a bit flat with a try and what he was on at half time.
Salmon 42 - did not have him playing 80 on my bingo card. 42 is great either way.
KPP 66 - great. Not much to add.
Crichton 61 - also great. Also not much to add.
Hynes 106 - underwhelming. At least he hit 50, but was one of the brutal downgrades
DBrown 70 - where was this score last week
this is more what I expected without Moses
Holmes 44 - another 40+. Stoked.
Iro 40 - new recruit #2. Also stoked. Hope he holds it long term.
Pappy 48 - with a try...and a sin bin. Swings and roundabouts.
Kris 35 - 90 minutes, 35 with no try. Still having to play him every week is annoying but here we are.
Campbell 33 - part of the reason why I have to play Kris for the foreseeable. Gutted that he's injured. Probably a trade.
Bench
Smithies 61 - back to back 60s. Keep it coming
Strange 50 - a few extra tackle breaks the last couple of weeks has bumped that average. More please.
Burbo 29 - untimely injury. Probably survives in the interim, but not tied to him so will trade if need be
Levi 18 - I'm done
NPR
Hutch 19 - Looped out for Burbo. Yip, finally more than 17 green dots.
Galvin Chan, Piakura
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The loss of Campbell hurts the most since it means I once again have to trade in a specific position to field 17. I'm undecided whether I trade him up to someone, or down to someone. I don't think I will be able to make enough money in trades to get him to Ponga, but maybe someone like CNK. Alternatively, Chester was tempting last week and I ended up going Iro...and now he has DPP I'm even more tempted.
Waddell also tempting, but sounds like he won't have enough games to make the money to make a trade worthwhile. I also need to get rid of Levi so that's a possibility. But I also need to strengthen my hooker position, so trading both of my cover players out in consecutive weeks is probably not a good idea (Boyd didn't really count as cover though since he was dropped).
I don't even know if want/need to use 3 trades this week, but will try a few combos and see what. Welcome back to Galvin and Chan, although Chan probably won't make the 17.
Team pre-trades
Lussick
Hoppy Uto Salmon
KPP Angus
Hynes Brown
Holmes Iro
Pappy Kris x
Galvin Strange Smithies Hutch
Levi Chan (Piakura Campbell Burbo)
Rank 8173
Bank $193k
Trades 27(3)
As always thanks for reading and good luck for this week!