2017 NRL.com Fantasy Thread Part 59

Just an interesting little fact. Those who traded Surgess to Taumalolo after he was ruled out in rd 15 have gained an additional 150 points from that single trade.

Burgess will play. He's a warrior and leads the Burgii clan by example. I know his season is essentially done but he ain't going out like that.

I think it's great how successful this forum is in terms of overall ranking, but I do sometimes feel that the "groupthink" is a little too pervasive. There sometimes seems to be a bit of a sense that there's only one strategy that is worthy and anyone not following that to the letter is not a "serious player". 

I play because I enjoy the strategy, but I personally like looking at alternative approaches - for instance last year I set up a WAG's team that was selected totally differently to any "accepted strategy", and it was quite successful. This year I was a long way behind after the first 4 rounds (~17000) so took the approach of sacrificing guns for better depth through the bye period. This week I could have brought Smith in, but chose McCullough - weighing everything up I thought it was the best choice, but a lot of comments here seem to be saying that not having Smith makes you somehow less serious a player?

SoylentGreen wrote:I think it's great how successful this forum is in terms of overall ranking, but I do sometimes feel that the "groupthink" is a little too pervasive. There sometimes seems to be a bit of a sense that there's only one strategy that is worthy and anyone not following that to the letter is not a "serious player". 

I play because I enjoy the strategy, but I personally like looking at alternative approaches - for instance last year I set up a WAG's team that was selected totally differently to any "accepted strategy", and it was quite successful. This year I was a long way behind after the first 4 rounds (~17000) so took the approach of sacrificing guns for better depth through the bye period. This week I could have brought Smith in, but chose McCullough - weighing everything up I thought it was the best choice, but a lot of comments here seem to be saying that not having Smith makes you somehow less serious a player?

It's been very obvious that Smith has been playing injured so not sure why any serious players would have missed it.

And to think a heap of us thought Matt Prior was going to end our 2017 fantasy campaign.

The 'serious player' attitude puts that person themselves straight into the 'limited player' bin i say. You need to try and adapt or make a success of it based on some of ur own moves and educated guesses as well as hard n fast historical rules.
B4 the season starts we know for a fact that players WILL get injured. Fantasy is a constantly evolving game, precedance and form are not 'locks' year in year out.
I personally love the challenge as it gets tighter come the end of season, making a choice of when to or not to use one of your last remaining 3 trades, guns dropping & fielding a full 17 not any longer a given....

You'll be back next year, so pucker up and choose a captain !

luckynumber8 wrote:And to think a heap of us thought Matt Prior was going to end our 2017 fantasy campaign.

Eh ??

Anyone wanna take some bets on who goes down this arvo?

wolfking wrote:Anyone wanna take some bets on who goes down this arvo?

Joel Thompson

Vanish wrote:
Not sure on how important Rule #1 is this year though. McCullough matched Smith point-for-point over the opening part of the year, Tlolo has basically an identical average and Crichton is outscoring all of them consistently week on week.

Isn't Crichton's avg when he plays 70+minutes like 75? And he's never scored lower than 50 in those games.

Quite a few people are criticising the rookie fantasy players for getting lucky by not following "Rule #1". I am a rookie player and ultimately decided to finish the year without Smith. This was because he has shown this year that he's just not as reliable as he has been in previous years. There are other players on the same level this year that make him not as necessary as he was in the past. I think a lot of longer term players are blinded by past years instead of what is actually happening this year.

I "got lucky" by choosing Crichton as my captain this week. I did so because I took the time to look closely at his scores, and as Vanish mentioned, his lowest score since he's been starting (a 11 game sample size) is 54, with an average over 70. But it's probably just because I'm a rookie who got lucky because I don't know what I'm doing.

wolfking wrote:Anyone wanna take some bets on who goes down this arvo?

Dunno who will go down, hopefully not McInnes, JDB or Vaughan. But I can tell you that Dylan Walker will score 60+ because I benched him this week.

Someone is going to absolutely smash this kid Dufty shortly.

I don't want Dufty to score well today, I want him cheap for next year as he will likely be the Dragons Fullback

Had Dufty since preseason. Scoring better than Mansauce at the moment...

SoylentGreen wrote:I think it's great how successful this forum is in terms of overall ranking, but I do sometimes feel that the "groupthink" is a little too pervasive. There sometimes seems to be a bit of a sense that there's only one strategy that is worthy and anyone not following that to the letter is not a "serious player". 

I play because I enjoy the strategy, but I personally like looking at alternative approaches - for instance last year I set up a WAG's team that was selected totally differently to any "accepted strategy", and it was quite successful. This year I was a long way behind after the first 4 rounds (~17000) so took the approach of sacrificing guns for better depth through the bye period. This week I could have brought Smith in, but chose McCullough - weighing everything up I thought it was the best choice, but a lot of comments here seem to be saying that not having Smith makes you somehow less serious a player?

This isn't entirely accurate. The main issue is that Smith has been for years head and shoulders above not only other Hookers but almost every other player for awhile now. Now last week most advocated Smith for that very reason but it was also situational.

I recall I person having the option of trading in Smith + Nofo or McCullough + Tedesco or something along those lines. Everyone who replied chose the second option.

Now I am not saying that the group tank mentality doesn't occur here because iirc Mata'utia was someone lots of people here were going to get while guys at Renegades he wasn't talked about much initially. At the same time I feel like we have a general team but many guys here play outside the box to an extent based on their own experience. There were guys who started with Ponga despite him not being named initially.

zorasdomain wrote:

Quite a few people are criticising the rookie fantasy players for getting lucky by not following "Rule #1". I am a rookie player and ultimately decided to finish the year without Smith. This was because he has shown this year that he's just not as reliable as he has been in previous years. There are other players on the same level this year that make him not as necessary as he was in the past. I think a lot of longer term players are blinded by past years instead of what is actually happening this year.

I "got lucky" by choosing Crichton as my captain this week. I did so because I took the time to look closely at his scores, and as Vanish mentioned, his lowest score since he's been starting (a 11 game sample size) is 54, with an average over 70. But it's probably just because I'm a rookie who got lucky because I don't know what I'm doing.

Basically, since this is your first year, you wouldn't know how Smith has been by far the best and most consistent fantasy player by a mile.

Anyone who didnt have smith has gotten lucky, pure and simple.

Manly need to start pulling finger to get McInnes some tackles.

I'm gonna assume that if some people have come across as condescending after the Smith injury it's just because they're pretty frustrated, which is understandable. You make long term plans to bring in Smith, with his massive average, and you execute that plan thinking you're giving yourself the best chance of success. And instead an unpredictable injury puts you behind. Very few people, myself included, would have told you Smith was anything other than a good purchase and noone could know he'd be injuried first week back from a bye.

I hate Manly but I need them to pull their finger out so DCE and tommy turbo can get some attacking stats and Mcinnes some tackles