I’m beginning to question whether I can actually start Oliver based on my bye structure and now have him out of my team. I had a 4 - 7 - 3 bye structure for rounds 12,13,14 so I’ve downgraded Doedee to Stephen Hill and turned Oliver into Macrae changing it to a 4- 6 - 4 structure.
Last year my starting structure was 3 - 6 - 5 structure and it played a huge part in allowing me to fly up the ranks during the byes.
The round 13 bye has 4 absolute locks in Docherty, Cripps, Gawn and Grundy and I don’t know how to get around this, having 7 players with that bye and only 3 with the last bye cant be good.
I do have Tom Lynch from Richmond at F3 and if Jack Steven turns out to be the better option I’ll be able to get Oliver as Steven has the R12 bye and Lynch the R13 bye.
Last year it was pretty easy to coordinate around the byes and to pick the team I really wanted to start but this year the round 13 bye has the Carlton boys, Grawndy and Dusty/Heeney.
This is a good point, I haven’t looked at byes in detail yet.
Thinking aloud/devil’s advocate, is Cripps necessarily a lock over Oliver?
- Oliver plays more games. Would have actually beaten Cripps on total points 2 years out of the last 3 (albeit not necessarily on a PIT basis).
- I think it’s clear Oliver is discounted. Less clear cut to me that Cripps is.
- It looks like Teague took over in R12, and Cripps’ scoring became more volatile - not necessarily lower, but more volatile. He basically went big (115+) and then small (close to 80) in alternating fashion from the time Teague took over. I’ve noted previously that Cripps tends not to have two bad games in a row, which would be worse again for his price, but is it possible that Cripps could be a viable upgrade target if he scores less consistently? Oliver is super consistent which means he’s probably a safe starter, but also one that probably won’t really punish you (unless you think he’s really discounted).
Might depend on who your other VC/C options were, and whether the extra cash was helpful.