5 more Saturday AFL games to greet Draftstars users in another epic day of Daily Fantasy. The good games are scheduled for the evening, but as ‘Tbetta’ explains, the early games are ripe for fantasy players to target!
MAIN CONTESTS:
$60,000 Main ($15 entry, 100 max)
$10,000 High Roller ($150 entry, 3 max)
$3,000 Mini ($2 entry, 15 max)
$2,000 Fiver ($5 entry, 20 max)
$2,000 Buck Hunter ($1 entry, 100 max)
$2,000 Micro ($0.50 entry, 100 max)
SATELLITE:
RICH vs HAW – MCG: Fine.
CARL vs WCE – Marvel Stadium: Under the roof.
BRIS vs GEEL – Gabba: Fine.
FREM vs SYD – Optus Stadium: Fine.
PORT vs COLL – Adelaide Oval: Showers.
INNER CORE:
FWD
He’s playing as almost a decoy up forward of late with just the 2 goals over the past month, but Jack Riewoldt ($8,560 FWD) has a chance to do some scoreboard damage with the Hawthorn match-up this week. He’s at the point in his career where it’s quality over quantity, so I can see something like a 4-goal effort resulting in a score of 80 – but that’ll do at this price.
Midfield carnage at the Blues has been enough to sneak Ed Curnow ($8,610 FWD/MID) back into the team, and while his exact role is unclear, midfield time is obviously possible. Ed hasn’t had any sort of midfield priority this year, but he has posted two tons this year, and both of those were on the back of +50% CBAs. Watch this space.
Joining him in a pillow-soft Eagles match-up is Jack Silvagni ($10,990 FWD/RUC). SOSOS was clearly Carlton’s best player last week as he filled some serious structural potholes, providing ruck relief to Tom De Koning while filling in for the injured Harry McKay up forward with 4 goals for his 110. Port Adelaide are one of the toughest fantasy opponents out there (they concede the fewest points of any team this year), so you have to wonder what Silvagni can achieve against West Coast’s green lights this week.
I know he’s been poor since returning from yet another soft tissue injury, but you just know the cheap Dayne Zorko ($11,580 MID/FWD) has a big score in his future – the tricky part is figuring out exactly when that is. Back at home and with the opportunity to ward off a Geelong attack on the Top 4 makes sense timing-wise for the Lions to remove the bubble wrap.
MID
It’s a midfield packed full of value this Saturday, and the Blues are responsible for a huge chunk of it. Paddy Dow ($8,090 MID) will be very popular as the next-man-up in the midfield, earning his first shot at a significant midfield role in the Seniors since Round 11 last season. He’s coming off scores of 119, 132 and 116 in the VFL, and getting the Eagles on the road won’t feel out of place with those games opposition-wise.
Fellow youngster Oliver Hollands ($8,640 MID) is another cheap option after instant promotion from the Bullants in his first game back from a broken collarbone, scoring a solid 95. He’s looking at a wing role with Sam Docherty likely to slide over to an inside midfield gig for a week or two.
Of course, I’ve buried the lede here as George Hewett ($11,880 MID) is clearly the Carlton midfielder to target with the West Coast match-up coinciding with the additional midfield time up for grabs. Hewy had his sighter last week and finished with 74 after fading late, which was to be expected after playing less than 40% TOG in his previous four AFL games. I think it’s safe to see that he’ll smash that 53% CBA number, too.
Before I step back from my Carlton tunnel vision, I have to throw Sam Walsh’s ($14,880 MID) name into the mix. The accumulator hasn’t reached the ton in 6 weeks as the Blues tinker with his role by adding significant time on the wing and across half forward, but you’d imagine that experiment takes a week off. If you needed any more convincing, Walsh averages a monstrous 111 against West Coast over his entire career.
A career-low kick-to-handball ratio of 0.74 for Sam Walsh this season. Was over 1.10 in his first two seasons – but this has dropped in each year from 2021. #SuperCoach #AFLFantasy
— Fantasy Freako (@FantasyFreako) July 16, 2023
There were plenty of observations from last week that are worth investigating further. Xavier Duursma ($9,340 MID) looked back to his best with 85 points on a wing for Port, although the Pies in the wet is a tough ask. Tom Atkins ($12,980 MID) has produced back-to-back career-highs of 126 and 122 over the past fortnight, with no clear rhyme or reason outside of being able to combine his heavy tackling rate with his ball winning in the same games.
Then we potentially have a new role for Scott Pendlebury ($12,920 MID) in the backline as the Pies work through their best midfield mix now that Nick Daicos is too good to leave out. He and Tom Mitchell ($14,280 MID) took it easy last week by sharing the sub vest, but I expect to see Titch back in the guts against Port. The slippery conditions will suit someone with his skillset, and it’s easy to forget that he was averaging 109 over his last 6 games before the break.
Lastly, we have the very talented Errol Gulden ($17,610 MID), who couldn’t be ticking any more boxes outside of the exorbitant price-tag. Not only is he in red-hot form with scores of 145, 128, 126 and 126 on the trot, but he has a 153-point monster against the Dockers under his belt already this year. Can you justify the price-tag?
DEF
The backline is once again ripe for the stacking, but we have some standalone options worth considering.
Corey Wagner ($8,930 DEF) did exactly what we hoped we would with 81 last week as a defensive line-breaker, but Hayden Young’s return and a decent price-hike muddies the waters. Could you pay up for his teammate Luke Ryan ($14,290 DEF) instead? Fremantle’s backline General is back at Optus Stadium where he’s averaged 108 points this year, versus 94 away (which includes that massive 156 vs St Kilda at Marvel in Round 1). 142 and 143 are his last two scores at home, which is a trend I think is worth paying attention to.
I can’t make it through a section without talking about the Blues it seems, but Nic Newman ($13,990 DEF) made that impossible with his epic score of 164 against the Eagles the last time around. I’m happy to write that one off as an outlier given that West Coast don’t usually give up big scores to defenders, so I’d turn my attention to Sam Docherty ($16,210 DEF/MID) instead. He’ll be required in the midfield for Carlton this week, and while I usually prefer him behind the ball, West Coast’s DvP matrix makes this a better one-week fit for Doch in DFS.
RUC
It’s an extremely competitive ruck line this week, as you see with some big names in the section below. Ivan Soldo ($11,490 RUC) is probably unjustifiably expensive from Draftstars, but Hawthorn is going in with a solo ruck, and following on from his break-out 107 last week… I can see it. Of course, the solo ruck role is great news for Ned Reeves ($9,430 RUC) too, provided there’s no last-minute shenanigans with Lloyd Meek on the emergency list this week.
I also want to mention Darcy Cameron ($12,780 RUC), despite it being his injury comeback game. Port Adelaide are the 2nd-easiest match-ups for RUCs this year, and the wet conditions should result in plenty of extra opportunities for Cameron to flex his ruck superiority. I haven’t forgotten his Round 2 performance, where he was arguably best on ground with 109 points against the Power.
BLACK HOLES:
Daniel Rioli ($13,180 DEF)
Every game Finn Maginness plays is another data point we gain as we attempt to figure out how Sam Mitchell plans to use his structural wildcard each week. After the Hawks opted to let North’s clear best player in Luke Davies-Uniacke run free (and rack up a career-high 10 marks) in favour of a Tarryn Thomas tag, the pattern becomes clearer. Inside accumulators are not the go.
Recent victims in Josh Kelly and the aforementioned Tarryn Thomas are more your damaging-ball-user types, which is exactly what Daniel Rioli brings to the table for Richmond. With a game-high 129 SuperCoach points and a perfect 10 Coaches Votes, there’s no chance he snuck under the radar at Hawthorn’s opposition analysis sessions this week.
Hugh McCluggage ($14,280 MID)
Josh Dunkley returns to the fray after a couple of weeks on the sidelines, which means it’s time to pack up The Suitcase. Of McCluggage’s four highest fantasy scores for the year, three have come in the last three weeks without Dunkley – which might seem unrelated given that it coincided with only a +13% CBA bump. But given that Dunkley has a hefty 7.1% market share of Brisbane’s fantasy points this year, those points had to go somewhere in his absence, and Hugh was the next cab off the rank.
That taxi is now overpriced and facing some heavy Geelong traffic, so it might be wiser to take an Uber instead.
Tim Kelly ($14,940 MID)
Carlton’s timely injury outbreak in the midfield has come at a very inopportune time for Tim Kelly, who could be looking at an incoming Ed Curnow tag. If you’ve followed this article over the course of the season, you’d know that I’m loath to pick TK and his limited ceiling at the best of times, so this is a very easy fade for me to make.
Carlton has a few moves they can make without activating prime Tagging Ed Curnow in the guts – Sam Docherty back on the inside, David Cuningham chopping out, etc – but with just the single score over 112 this year there is very minimal upside in the Tim Kelly pick. Why take the risk?
STAR SIGNS:
King Koning
Ruckmen against West Coast has been a DFS cheat code all year, with the Eagles conceding the most fantasy points to RUC’s and the most hitouts of all 18 clubs in the solar system. This means that the stars have aligned perfectly for a Tom De Koning ($10,850 RUC) upswing, retaining sole ruck duties with Marc Pittonet still nursing a hand injury on the sidelines.
Consistency is far from TDK’s 1-wood, but he just came off a game against the 2nd-best ruck match-up in the Power – where he racked up season-highs in hitouts (33) and fantasy points (97). He can go one better with a ton this weekend.
Re-Action Jackson
No Sean Darcy and no replacement ruck makes Luke Jackson ($14,080 RUC) a busy boy. His scores without Darcy this year reads 108, 119 and 94, making it very hard to ignore the Premiership Demon and his unlimited stat sources.
The projections sweeten even more when you consider that Sydney are the 3rd-easiest team to score ruck points against this year; so much so that they’ve basically given up on the role by refusing to pick a proper ruckman for the second-straight week. I’m sure I don’t need to mention what Tim English was able to do against the Hayden McLean/Joel Amartey pairing last weekend…. Cough 140 points cough 60 hitouts cough-cough.
Charlie Curnow
There’s the “elephant in the room” and then there’s that elephant from the 2022 funeral attack in India, and Charlie Curnow ($14,130 FWD) is the latter. There was nothing subtle about Charlie’s 9 goals, 14 marks and 151 against West Coast earlier this year, and I expect Carlton’s focus heading inside forward 50 will be equally as subtle with Harry McKay ruled out for the rest of the home-and-away season.
The price-tag is outrageous for someone who hasn’t reached the ton in 6 weeks, but Draftstars are clearly anticipating plenty of Curnow interest and priced him accordingly. Will you back in the dream match-up, or play it safe due to the nightmarish basement?
Charlie Curnow has kicked at least one goal in each of his past 38 games.
He’s kicked multiple goals in 31 of those games (81.5%)
He has kicked 115 goals since the beginning of the 2022 season. 60% of his total career goals (194 so far) have been in that period. #baggers
— Coby (@CobyPrigg) July 19, 2023
GALAXY CLUSTER:
Carlton – Full Stack
Opening up the fixture and realising that you have West Coast on the road is like seeing a wall of cherries on a slot machine. Carlton certainly enjoyed their trip out to Perth in Round 7 with a 108-point thrashing – where they also outscored their opponents by an insane 2077-1203 in the fantasy stakes, with an equally-insane 6 players topping the magical 120-point mark.
West Coast – DEF Stack
It’s early days, but my West Coast theory held water last week. Richmond took 3 quarters to put the result beyond doubt at Optus Stadium, which meant that the Eagles never had to go into that ball-retention chip-chip mode to stop a nasty margin from ballooning. While I would have been all chips in on this trend had the Blues not just lost McKay, Cerra and Cripps at selection, the trip to Victoria makes an early Carlton lead a very live possibility.
Of course, Carlton has been one of our favourite DEF-stacking targets in 2023 regardless of the result anyway. You just have to look at the past fortnight alone where Luke Ryan (142) and Dan Houston (156) both went nuclear in losses to the Blues.
Hawthorn – DEF Stack
It’s a tough slate for trends, but I like the Hawks backline as an alternative to the hit-or-miss West Coast. Richmond has conceded the 3rd-most points to DEFs this year, and more importantly, they haven’t tagged at all so far this year. This is great news for James Sicily ($15,890 DEF), who might turn off the casuals that missed that he was tagged to his 65 last weekend.
Pairing him with other attacking types like Jarman Impey ($12,750 DEF), Blake Hardwick ($12,630 DEF) or even a fresh Seamus Mitchell ($10,350 DEF) makes a lot of sense here.
MULTIVERSE THEORY:
In a parallel universe…
- Was the brief stint in the tactical sub vest enough to spark Andrew Gaff ($9,510 MID) back into form? He’s produced scores of 88 and 83 within his last 3 games, after all.
- Mark O’Connor has been used as a cooler lately, starting in defence before moving onto a star player if they start dominating in the guts. This lowers the ceilings of both of Brisbane’s big guns in Lachie Neale and Josh Dunkley, and therefore lowers my DFS interest in them significantly.
- The Tigers haven’t tagged all year, but seeing James Sicily bleed last week, could they sacrifice a lesser player like Jack Graham, Rhyan Mansell or even the nasty Liam Baker to keep the ball out of his hands?
Tbetta.
Ready to go? Draftstars multi game Saturday slate will close at 1.45pm AEST. ENTER NOW!
What’s Gambling really costing you? For free and confidential support call 1800 858 858 or visit gamblinghelponline.org.au
