Personally, I think you are looking at it in the wrong way.
I like to put it in terms of scoring slots. 85% of the time you have 22, last week you had 18. Some people benefitted from the change, some people suffered, but I think looking at player game counts is the wrong way to look at it.
I think the biggest mistake VS made was not making and announcing a contingency plan.
If I was VS, preseason I would have announced: 1 game canceled mid round and it becomes best 22 from your 30, 2 games cancelled mid round and it becomes best 18 from your 30, 3 games cancelled, round cancelled. Any game cancelations, up to 3 games, prior to the start of a round, and bye rules apply.
I think VS's only mistake was not forward planning, and keeping us informed.
Once they dug that hole, there is nothing they could have done last week, that wouldn't have upset at least 25% of the Coaches.
Without bias to your own team and situation, what do you think they should have done last week?
I actually agree with the Best 18 ruling , given that 8 other games were completed.
Players missing games (Greene) and late outs (Kelly) is part of the game that people then have choices to deal with.
I owned at the time Bennell , KPP , Rivers , Smith.
Certainly feel sorry for those who owned more Essendon/Melbourne players especially premiums (I posted the Top 10% owned in one of the other threads) but on the other hand you have SC coaches that may not own as many of those players from those 2 teams.
Personally I hope they never use forecast scores or averages as replacements and rely on a real game , too many variables in a game of football.
Totally agree that they well and truly should have had contingency plans in place when they resumed the season in Round 2 given how much uncertainty there was and still is around the virus and advised us beforehand.
I guess what I don't understand is why not just then score the Ess v Melbourne game when it is actually played , it could be :-
* stand alone at the end of Round 17
* part of a Sat-Wed-Sun fixturing
* split round if we do end up having byes
all conjecture and speculation , I would imagine Auld has 100 whiteboards in his office trying to work it all out (ok it's done on computer)
so players could be rested , rotated etc , who knows
if both teams are out of the finals race , they might be in experimental mode anyway
Given (so far) we can only have 2 trades per week they are worried about people trading in Ess/Melbourne players to take advantage of a double score , but like I think you may have mentioned you probably would only really be targetting Gawn , Merrett , Oliver types.
Hope that makes sense
Anyway the decision has been made now , just have to accept it for what it is and move on.
I was only thinking if you owned Whitfield (E) and was thinking wow I dodged a bullet their and he ended up as part of your Best 18 anyway
Thanks for your response