2019 NRL.com Fantasy thread part 2

Alfie wrote:

Papa played middle last year at 13 when he came back from being dropped. Seems to be priced accordingly

Mulvy wrote:

Here 'tis

https://www.nrlfantasyfanatics.com/t615-forum-bet-avatars-names-etc-thread-aka-record-of-welshy-s-losses

Mulvy wrote:

Well I did suggest an Avatar at the time, but Archer was MIA by that time. And I've got a long memory. I'd be happy with him wearing this for a couple of weeks - Ah, round 15, 2015, JT field goal crushes Raiders spirit, one of my favourite games of all time:

Archer wrote:
Oh... Fuck. Ok, once I'm back on the pc later today. And yeah I spent from April to Dec travelling through europe so didn't spend a great deal of time in the fantasy world sorry.

WT2K wrote:Word doing the rounds is that Benji Marshall has torn his hamstring at training.

DarkKnight wrote:Bring on another year of fantasy. Just realised this is my 11th year of playing as I have kept track of my finishing position each year.

2009 - 174
2010 - 111
2011 - 17
2012 - 6,155
2013 - 1,757
2014 - 2,809
2015 - 98
2016 - 136
2017 - 222
2018 - 74
2019 - ?

Archer wrote:Thanks for the warm welcome lads, back in Aus and looking for work so i thought I'd wander back in here in between Netflix and Dota. Might contribute something more than 1 or 2 Rapa pics i guess, so I'll start with Raiders. Firstly cause I'm one eyed and Secondly and more importantly, cause I think they'll be somewhat overlooked by most because they appear to have few changes on initial glance.

So on to the Breakdown.
Notable Losses (Italics are borderline): Austin, Paulo, Boyd, Gubb, Knight
Notable Gains: Pom Bateman , Sutton.

As i said, on first glance a lot of people will see Paulo and Boyd being replaced by two Poms and think nothing much of it.
However, what's missing there is that Bateman is better suited in the back row or lock i believe (happy to be corrected by the poms on this one). With Papa, Whitehead and Tarps all playing there, chances are one of these will be shifted to Prop, with my bet being Papa. Could be interesting, Papa can work hard when in the middle.
Secondly, both Paulo and Boyd were large less mobile bodies, which tended to have an impact on our defence, most notably out wide as the middle rarely pushed wide fast enough and left the outside men with overlaps and hard choices, rarely getting it right. The smaller more mobile blokes (and i believe Sutton tends to be quite good defensively according to his stats?) could potentially see a few less points lost defensively.

Next is Austin, i won't talk about him and his play or how the loss of him may effect the team (although for the record i think it will be a positive for both parties). But what I do want to go into is what this means for the halves, as something talked about all off season was Wighton training there. He's quite strong defensively (which is once again great for the outside backs) and you would assume would play the role of secondary playmaker, leaving the organisation up to Sezer. This could potentially see both get an increase of scoring. It also would open up the fullback slot...

This could then see Cotric shift back to FB, which is hard to gauge wrt to his scoring as he's done fantastically on the wing and been up and down in the few games at NRL FB. I'd be willing to back him as being a gun if he stayed there all season but it could be a rocky start scoring wise. Alternatively it may see Abbey or Oldfield slot in at FB. Not sure how i feel about that but fantasy wise I'm not thrilled.

Which leads on to Rapa being out for the first half of the year. Gutted. Heartbroken. I blame Welshy. It will be interesting to see what impact this has on BJ, could he go looking for even more work with his mate not there or will he too go missing? Could the Raiders attack shift to focusing more on Croker + Cotric (if he remains on the wing)?

Anyway, personally I'll be looking at quite a few of the Raiders players as potentials for my team (surprise surprise). If the poms get a discount I'll be hard pressed to overlook them and the same goes with Papa in the middle, although I'm a little unsure about the bench rotation and minutes. Wighton at 6 tempts me with extra defensive work and kick meters. Sezer would be on my watch list to see if he went back to scoring like the titans days. Cotric would be on the watch list at FB.

Mulvy wrote:

Josh Reynolds has never really interested me in fantasy but he's cheap. Could be good for Wobbie. But rd 1 is still a long way off.

GreenMachine wrote:

I would say welcome back Archer, but I don’t live back there myself but welcome back to the forum ol mate! First day back myself.

Happy new season gents from your favourite guns and cows degen from way back.

Just did a bit of offline catching up. Most jealous that’s DK managed to record finishing positions for all these years we’ve been playing. How you managed that through no doubt countless phones and laptops and potentially email addresses I’ll never know! I’m flat out remembering my wedding ring when I move house

Great work Alfie (and great avatar) on the forward rotation minutes estimates. I think they should be a live evolving list. Page 1 of every new thread material. Look forward to the tinker. Thanks to MTB the enabler! Love the new team feature. Another case of coldies coming your way this season pal.

Bring on the real money leagues again!!  

Alfie wrote:

Cheers mate, Peaky Blinders fan? Best show ever. I’ll definitely give the rotations a tinker as news comes in and trials commence. I’ll finish my comments tonight as well

Mulvy wrote:Interesting read from Steve Nicholls:

http://renegadesfs.com/index.php/nrl-fantasy/item/1968-how-i-finished-10th-in-nrl-fantasy

Apparently, guns and cows isn't the way GM. Welcome back btw.