I actually don’t want him in my team and at times he hasn’t been there but it’s the ownership numbers that is forcing me to keep him.
I'm similar, the depth of midprice forwards has hit a very hard wall early which isn't helping. If guys like Parker, Maric, Phillipou and a couple of others were viable that would help avoid him. The other issue I keep finding is that the other options are such wild cards. Jackson without Reidy would be a strong starting play. JHF has the bye of doom, Rankine is very hard to trust and the rest really don't interest me.
So keep kind of falling into him in my side
The conversation on fading popular players is very interesting. I then wondered how many popular players I was fading
I went through and found 17 players with more than 50% ownership and Erasmus at 48%
I own 11 of those 18. Of the 7 missing, 4 were rookies, but the 3 premiums were Xerri, Sheezel and JHF. All Rd12, but I thought all 3 were overpriced.
I then looked at players in my team 10% or under ownership. 7 premos and 1 rookie. For a coach like me who thinks there is some value in starting vanilla, this is a bit frightening! I was surprised by some NWM 8%, Clark 5%. Brayshaw 10%, Rozee 6%, Anderson 3%. Nank 2%, Meek 5%. (the rookie is O’Driscoll at 6%, which will surely change!).
Must be many people waiting before changing their teams - Coleman still has 24% ownership.
The players with more than 50% ownership
Xerri 55%
Bont 50%
Sheezel 56%
JHF 53%
Oliver 51%
Macrae 60%
Smith 67%
Mills 59%
Daniel 70%
Rookies
Smith 66%
Ashcroft 51%
Travaglia 56%
Kako 51%
B Allan 66%
Hewett 63%
El Hawli 55%
Erasmus 48%
Boyd 50%
Not saying you shouldn’t fade popular selections. But there is a competitive play of taking the popular picks because if they work and you bet against them you can give ground to too many other competitors.
I am going to stay with my 3 fades- albeit nervously.
how many 50+% owned premos are you fading?
How many 10% and under premos are you starting? My 7 makes me nervous for sure.
Would hazard a guess that not many have actually factored byes yet, hence Clark/NWM being very low, there's also very compelling cases for the Sinclair/Ryan pairing and you can really only take 2 of those 4 at most. FWIW, I think all 4 have great cases to start them.
Fading Sheezel is brave. He's got upside potential, he absolutely could get FWD DPP and he's likely to be the most selected premium back because he's the only one without any real wart outside his bye but even that's not bad as he's the only one down back right now in it that's really strong.
I expect Xerri drops a bit as people start to look at the byes. JHF depends what the cheaper options do, he's definitely the standout forward premium option, bye not ideal though.
Fading super popular guys is just really high risk.
Simple fact is there's 4 possible outcomes.
Smith Win, Alternative WIn - No gain
Smith Win, Alt Fail - Massive Loss
Smith Fail, Alt Win - Big win
Smith Fail, Alt Fail - No Gain
So 3 out of 4 you're not ahead and even the 1 where you're ahead, come round 3 everyone will jump on your winner or, worse, an even bigger winner. You're a trade and some points ahead but not sure that's worth it for the downside risk, especially given the herd is generally going to find the best option on paper so you're looking at weaker options and hoping to outproduce the expected outcomes.
FWIW, if you put a gun to my head, I think Graham outproduces Smith over the first 6 weeks at more or less the same price but I'm not sure I'd wager my season on it
