A rare late start on Saturday just brings a very manageable two-game slate for Draftstars users.
Only 4 teams to look at but plenty of strategy to deep dive with Draftstars veteran ‘Tbetta’, in this weeks edition of ‘Stargazing’.
MAIN CONTESTS:
$60,000 Main ($15 entry, 100 max)
$10,000 High Roller ($150 entry, 3 max)
$5,000 Fiver ($5 entry, 50 max)
$3,000 Mini ($2 entry, 15 max)
$2,000 Buck Hunter ($1 entry, 100 max)
$2,000 Micro ($0.50 entry, 100 max)
SATELLITE:
GWS vs FREM – GIANTS Stadium: Fine.
RICH vs STK – MCG: Showers.
INNER CORE:
FWD
While he didn’t fire last week with a 44, Liam Henry ($7,480 FWD/MID) has a guaranteed wing role and that’s always a great foundation for an upswing. Something like the 73 points he had against North back in Round 2 – a couple of weeks before he was dropped to the WAFL where he proceeded to average 95 over 6 rounds – would be slate-winning. Marcus Windhager ($8,810 FWD/MID) is the main competitor in his price-range, notching season-highs in CBAs (36%) and fantasy score (66) last week. St Kilda haven’t named up any changes at the selection table, so he’ll be a part of that midfield group again.
Brent Daniels was on a fantasy heater (112, 100) as a high half forward before pinging his hambone, but a couple of Giants have filled the void since. Daniel Lloyd ($8,080 FWD/MID) creeps up to a wing at times and has cranked out back-to-back season-highs of 74 over the past fortnight. The like-for-like replacement has been Toby Bedford ($9,970 FWD) however, roaming further up the ground for what has also been back-to-back season-highs of 92 and 87 since Daniels joined the rehab group. Both are worth a look on a two-game slate.
It’s an uninspiring forward pool with Draftstars opting to strip FWD status from some tempting hybrid options of late, so Shai Bolton ($14,100 FWD/MID) falls onto my radar as a pay-up option. His price is certainly bloated, but he’s shown the ceiling to match with three scores of 120+ in his last 6 outings. Last week’s 33 touches were a career-high, and now he’s coming up against the team (St Kilda) that has conceded more disposals than any other in season 2023.
MID
The players who’ve had FWD status stolen from them are the veteran pair of Brownlow Medallists in Nat Fyfe ($9,680 MID) and Trent Cotchin ($10,770 MID) following their recent midfield renaissances. The parallels between the duo continue as they both were given 54% CBAs last week, with both producing season-high scores of 83 and 94 respectively. Their salaries won’t be this low for long, so jump on now if you think they can keep nudging 90.
“You can get caught up in all the hoo-haa around what’s next but I’m really just trying to celebrate what is right now.”
Trent Cotchin isn’t ready to think about retirement as he prepares to run out for game 300.https://t.co/tRQZp5jG4N
— AFL (@AFL) June 15, 2023
I was somewhat surprised to see Jaeger O’Meara ($12,290 MID) this cheap so I’m very happy to snap him up on the back of a one-week freshen-up through suspension. After a slow start to the Fremantle chapter of his career, he’s shown his class with a healthy basement score of 85 in last six starts.
As per usual at this time of the year, everyone has their own caveats that you need to consider – even the premium midfield guys. After a lull, Brad Crouch ($15,010 MID) has pumped out 114 and 123 over the past fortnight as Steele has taken a backseat – more on that below. Tom Green ($16,210 MID) is coming off a rare bout of mortality due to a Liam Shiels shadow where he scored a season-low 73, so he’ll be back to normal programming this week against a Fremantle side that doesn’t tag.
The elephant in the room is Tim Taranto ($17,780 MID) and his girthy price-tag. I usually don’t recommend players at this price because the maths make it very hard to return the 8X value that you need to have him feature in a winning line-up, but 140 is genuinely in play here. St Kilda trails only West Coast for 120+ scores conceded this season, a threshold that Taranto has reached in each of the past 5 weeks.
DEF
Nathan O’Driscoll ($9,110 DEF/MID) was what I like to call the “scraps” wingman last week as the third banana in an outside rotation with James Aish and Liam Henry, but the young Docker receives a promotion with the former out injured for the GWS clash. With scores of 86 and 92 from NOD already this season, make sure you’re geared up for an upswing.
Harry Himmelberg ($12,370 DEF) has now produced 91 and 81 as a defender over the past fortnight, but he’s very hard to pick after mixed messaging from the West Of The Town. Initially “confirmed” as a backman for the rest of the year, that claim was rescinded by Adam Kingsley less than a week later as he slowly regains soldiers (such as the All-Australian Sam Taylor) from the injury list. I still have him playing back this week, but I’m concerned at the overlapping skillsets of himself, Lachie Whitfield, Lachie Ash and Nick Haynes, and how they’ll all find ways to eat.
Instead, I’ll be looking closely at a couple of Tigers in defence this Saturday. Nick Vlastuin ($12,490 DEF) is still the kick-in king at Tigerland, scoring 99 and 117 either side of a brutal corkie that cost him a couple of weeks. He’s been reunited with Jayden Short ($14,350 DEF) in defence lately as Andrew McQualter makes his mark on the team, registering a big fat 0 CBAs since the caretaker coach took over. Of course, the subtext here is that he’s now perfectly placed to cash in on the potent “DEFs vs St Kilda” trend that we’ve loved all year.
RUC
It’s hard not to zero in on Luke Jackson ($14,030 RUC) following belters of 108 and 119 sans Sean Darcy, but he’s swimming in completely different waters at this elevated salary. It’s very easy to convince yourself to pay up that little bit extra for the safety of career ruckmen in Toby Nankervis ($15,570 RUC) or Rowan Marshall ($16,710 RUC) now that the difference in price is negligible. The ruck will be a huge factor on this slate with the four main options (the three above plus Kieren Briggs) all worthy of consideration and incredibly difficult to split.
I don’t think it’s the right slate for it, but if you want to get thrifty in the RUC slot then Josh Treacy ($8,370 FWD/RUC) is probably your guy. He posted his best score of the year as a pinch-hitting ruckman against the Tigers, picking up plenty of extra stats with 7 hitouts, 6 marks and 4 tackles for his 82.
BLACK HOLES:
Matthew Johnson ($9,410 MID)
With Jaeger O’Meara returning from suspension in the same week as a $1.6k price-hike, I’m cooling my jets on the Fremantle midfielder. While Johnson’s CBAs will only come back slightly from the 42% that helped him rack up a career-best 93 points last week, it’s more that he won’t be leaned on as much as an accumulator with an extra senior body in O’Meara ahead of him in the midfield pecking order.
So not only is replicating last week’s 11.9X-value effort virtually impossible, reaching even a solid 8X (roughly 75 points) would require Johnson to outperform his career-average by 11 points.
Callan Ward ($13,090 MID)
The Giants have regained some big-name reinforcements from the medical tent, which is likely to shake up their structure. Josh Kelly is arguably the first-picked midfielder for GWS, while the defensive pillar of Sam Taylor bumps someone out of the back seven unit – which is potentially the sometimes-midfielder Harry Perryman (see below). You can see the midfield squeeze already.
That puts the recent midfield time of veteran Callan Ward under the microscope, whose hot form makes it easy to forget that he was given just a 17% CBA share prior to Kelly’s injury. Even removing the two games where he started as the tactical sub, the man with the best hair in the AFL averaged just 69 points from those games.
Jack Steele ($14,490 MID)
This is less of a blanket ban and more of a public service announcement that the usually rock-solid Steele has some structural integrity issues of late, which is affecting his fantasy output. It was revealed during the week that Jack has been carrying a knee injury since a Round 9 incident against the Crows, causing his average to drop by 11 points and introducing some concerning inconsistency into the St Kilda skipper’s game.
In fact, the past month has been the first time since early 2018 where he’s produced only one score of 90+ amongst any five-game stretch. Make sure you’re baking Steele’s newfound variance into your game scripts until further notice.
STAR SIGNS:
Kieren Briggs ($14,020 RUC)
I’ve been something of a sceptic with Briggs over the past few weeks, but it’s getting harder and harder to justify following scores of 111, 117 and 101 on the trot. And it’s not just the outrageous numbers he’s posting – he’s passing the eye test with flying colours, too.
Briggs runs into part-timer Luke Jackson this week who, despite scoring very well himself, has conceded scores of 95 (Brodie Grundy), 91 (Max Gawn) and 129 (Toby Nankervis) over the past fortnight. All signs are pointing to the all-rounder raising the bat again at GIANTS Stadium this Saturday.
Jack Sinclair ($14,890 DEF)
We’ve talked in the past about how, for particular players, increased CBAs don’t actually result in increased fantasy scores. Jack Sinclair is one of those special players, largely because when he doesn’t play in the guts, he gets a ton of easy (or easier) ball as the primary distributor across half-back for the Saints.
The splits are as crazy as they are clear – his fantasy average is 87 when given even a modest 30% CBAs, compared to a much juicier 112 when he’s below that figure and settled in the backline. Marcus Windhager took the majority of Sinclair’s midfield time last week as he dropped from 61% to 28% centre bounce action, which presumably repeats against Richmond with the Saints going in unchanged.
In 2022, Jack Sinclair polled 46 coaches’ votes in an All-Australian season.
At the halfway point of this year, Sincs has already polled 48 votes.
What a man 🌟 pic.twitter.com/QCRYLj5Vc2
— St Kilda FC (@stkildafc) June 13, 2023
Harry Perryman ($10,960 DEF)
Of course, midfield time is key for the vast majority of players and Perryman sits right in the middle of the bell curve on that trend. The GWS utility averaged 84 as a midfielder earlier this season before an injury crisis sent him back to defence, where he’s managed scores of just 59, 55 and 58 on the trot.
With Nick Haynes, Harry Himmelberg and Sam Taylor all returning to the squad over the past few weeks – plus Isaac Cumming as an emergency on Saturday – it’s fair to say that GWS’s need for Perryman in defence has ended.
GALAXY CLUSTER:
Richmond – DEF Stack
St Kilda are conceding easily the most to opposition DEFs this year, which is partly due to their stat-heavy game style, but also a by-product of lacking dominant key forwards for most of the season. Richmond had all of Nick Vlastuin (117), Jayden Short (103) and Daniel Rioli (80) sharing the kick-ins and scoring well against the Fremantle tide, so one has to wonder what they can do against a club that dares opposition backmen to rack up +6 combos at will.
GWS – Full Stack
Sometimes on a two-game slate you really have to go looking for places to attack. I’m not convinced it’s an everlasting trend, but Fremantle are giving up the 2nd-most points to inside MIDs over the last 5 weeks – including scores of 129 (Tim Taranto) and 124 (Shai Bolton) last week – which might come into your thinking with some of GWS’s stars.
Tbetta.
Ready to go? Draftstars multi game Saturday slate will close at 4.35pm AEST. ENTER NOW!
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