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Gather Round ends with a 3 game slate on Draftstars. The Adelaide Oval will be copping a pounding, but we should not be concerned. The game of the season is on the dessert menu today, so let Draftstars veteran player ‘Tbetta’, take another look on what your Draftstars teams should look like on Sunday.
MAIN CONTESTS:
$75,000 Main ($15 entry, 125 max)
$10,000 High Roller ($150 entry, 3 max)
$5,000 Fiver ($5 entry, 50 max)
$3,000 Mini ($2 entry, 15 max)
$2,500 Buck Hunter ($1 entry, 100 max)
$2,000 Micro ($0.50 entry, 100 max)
WANT TO LEARN HOW TO PLAY AFL DRAFTSTARS?
SATELLITE:
GEEL vs WCE – Chance of showers.
GWS vs HAW – Chance of showers.
COLL vs STK – Chance of showers.
INNER CORE:
FWD
Debutant Watch is underwhelming up forward this Sunday, with Aaron Cadman ($6,000 FWD) and Seamus Mitchell ($6,000 FWD) unlikely to turn modest VFL scores into big AFL totals on debut. Jack Ginnivan ($6,560 FWD) is more of a known quantity and will attract ownership given his low price and name brand value, but it’s not like he was banging the door down with just 1.5 goals and 58 points per game in the 2s.
Honestly, I’m not seeing a lot of obvious value in the 4-digit price bracket that I’d be happy adding to my “core”. This is probably one slate where you focus on correlation in the FWDs, such as darts at cheaper Geelong & Collingwood goalkickers in their respective team stacks.
If you have a bit more coin available, Jesse Hogan ($12,310 FWD) could be worth a couple of pot-shots given that Hawthorn concedes the second-most to Key FWDs – something like his 102 from 8 marks and 3 sausage rolls against West Coast a few weeks ago would be marvellous. Toby Greene ($11,370 FWD) plays tall enough that he could cash in on the same DvP, and only remains this cheap because of that 22-point blip sandwiched in amongst scores of 118, 89 and 96 so far this year.
MID
This is definitely the line to hunt for value. Ned Long ($6,000 MID) has scored dual 97s at VFL level this year, and I have him locked in for midfield time with Will Day and his 82% CBA share suspended, Finn Maginness dropped and Cam Mackenzie managed. I’m also interested in Xavier O’Halloran ($6,080 MID) with the potential for wing time against the soft DvP of Hawthorn. West Coast haven’t received any midfield reinforcements yet, so Greg Clark ($7,110 MID) and Luke Edwards ($7,240 MID) remain in play.
There’s also some value to be found in the midrange, with Hunter Clark ($11,020 MID) guaranteed midfield time and Mark Blicavs ($12,220 MID) able to cash in on the easy DvP of both West Coast’s ruck and midfield lines. The scoring of fellow key Cats in Patrick Dangerfield and Cam Guthrie have increased each week, so targeting them in the $13k region makes sense.
Anyone for a Tim Kelly ($14,980 MID) revenge game? The former Cat put West Coast on his shoulders last week with a massive 142 from 36 touches and 2 snags and he might need to be Atlas once again with a supporting cast of WAFL fringe guys. A tough ask, so for slightly more scratch I like GWS duo Tom Green and Josh Kelly to assert their dominance over the young Hawthorn midfield.
DEF
With this line being increasingly prioritised as a stacking anchor, “core” players are typically more pricey in defense. Jarman Impey ($9,740 FWD/DEF) has returned to half-back and is scoring accordingly with 89 against the Cats, as is Lachie Ash ($10,740 DEF) and Nick Haynes ($11,880 DEF) for the Giants. Nasiah Wanganeen-Milera ($11,390 DEF/FWD) has been a beneficiary of the injury crisis at St Kilda, with Jack Sinclair’s shift to a hybrid midfield role allowing the young Saint to rise to the top of the kick-in list.
If you have the coin available, shooting for a James Sicily ($14,730 DEF) ceiling game is always a play, given he’s one of only two players to have multiple scores of 130+ this season.
RUC
It’s hard not to salivate at the thought of Rowan Marshall ($15,870 RUC) facing the ruckless Pies, but can he realistically outperform Rhys Stanley ($10,910 RUC) against the Eagles on a per-dollar basis? With such juicy match-ups, this feels like a two-horse race for mine, so I’ll be largely alternating between the pair.
BLACK HOLES:
Tom Stewart ($13,800 MID)
Mitch Duncan’s return to the side has clearly bumped Stewart out of his backline distributor role, with the 13 marks and 126 fantasy points he had against the Suns translating perfectly to Duncan’s 14 marks and 127 fantasy points a week later against the Hawks. Until we see one of these blokes move up to a wing to untangle their overlapping skillsets, I’ll be very cautious with Stewart in general; but West Coast ranking as the hardest match-up for DEFs is the nail in the coffin for Gather Round.
Elliot Yeo ($11,000 DEF/MID)
Persistent soft tissue injuries for Yeo and no realistic chance of contesting for the finals means that West Coast are going to continue to bubble-wrap him for at least the short term. They did this in the form of both rest (subbed out at 3QT) and role (half-back, despite all the midfield injuries) in Round 4, and I’d expect that to be how he’s wielded once again against the Cats.
Nick Daicos ($16,030 DEF)
Outside of the ridiculous price-tag for a second-year player, the torrent of media speculation around Nick Dacios and the disrespect other clubs are showing him early in 2023 is building nicely for a date with the wily Windhager. With scalps of Tim Kelly (17), Cam Guthrie (89), Neale (60) and Warner (78) late last year, the young St Kilda scrapper can’t be discounted. And if the short-handed Saints opt to keep in the midfield instead, they’ve also got Mitch Owens up forward with the ability to do a job on a primary defender, like the Tom Stewart (46) heist in Round 21 last season. Buyer beware.
STAR SIGNS:
Not Even Stanley Can Mess This Up
A solo ruckman for $11k up against a Naitanui-less West coast is basically printing money, so I expect Rhys Stanley ($10,910 RUC) to be the clear most-selected ruckman on the slate. With ruck scores of 110 (Flynn), 128 (Darcy) and 119 (Grundy) against the Eagles over the last three rounds, I suggest this is one crowd that you go with on Sunday.
Nick Reigns
As mentioned with Tom Stewart above, role is such a crucial ingredient for the fantasy scoring of defenders and Nick Haynes ($11,880 DEF) hadn’t had that at all last year. Unbeknownst to the wider football community, Haynes’s fluctuating role and declining form was due to a debilitating health issue – an issue that he’s now apparently overcome.
As a result, the All-Australian is back in defense playing that linchpin role, culminating in career-highs of 17 marks and 126 fantasy points in Round 4. He’s up against the rebuilding Hawks this week, a team that Mitch Duncan just racked up figures of 14 marks and 127 fantasy points against. In my opinion, Haynes looms as one of the best ceiling options on Sunday afternoon.
Kelly’s Grudge
I’m not sure what Josh Kelly ($15,870 MID) has against Hawthorn, but he’s certainly expressed his disdain for them over a long period of time with an exhaustive career score chart of 95, 136, 107, 115, 145, 97 and 124 on their heads. As for Gather Round’s prospects, the stars are aligning nicely for another monster. Kelly is averaging a career-high 71% CBA rate, faces the rebuilding Hawks and won’t have to deal with a possible Maginness tag after being dropped. Love it.
GALAXY CLUSTER:
Geelong – RUC, MID, FWD Stack
We’re enacting the same plan that fizzled with Melbourne last week, but this time West Coast won’t get to play under the security blanket of the Optus Stadium lights. Geelong are a couple of games behind we’re they’d like to be in their quest for back-to-back, so I expect them to come out uncharacteristically guns blazing. They just smashed the Hawks in the fantasy stakes to the tune of almost 500 points, and I can definitely foresee a similar margin for an Eagles side without Luke Shuey, Dom Sheed, Nic Naitanui, Shannon Hurn, Jamie Cripps, Liam Ryan and Mitch McGovern. Stack them everywhere but the backline.
GWS – DEF Stack
While the Hawks have a lot of scrappy young midfielders, their competitiveness at the contest dissipates on transition – meaning they concede a lot of stats to the more outside types. I’m very interested in investigating combinations of Lachie Whitfield, Nick Haynes, Isaac Cumming and Lachie Ash with easy ball across half-back, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see random upswings from Jack Buckley or Connor Idun either. If you’re “full” stacking the Giants, look to package them up with wingmen like Finn Callaghan and even paying up for the hybrid Josh Kelly.
MULTIVERSE THEORY:
In a parallel universe:
Tbetta.
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