GREAT to see the boys get a win on Saturday in Alice Springs. Hopefully this can kickstart the rest of the season for us. However, how is your season going as an AFL Fantasy coach? Are you in need of a kick start? Hopefully not, but this has been one of the more challenging seasons for Fantasy coaches with all of the injuries and poor form to key players.

On the weekend we had five of our players hit the 100 mark. No surprises that it was Brad Ebert that was leading the way with his 124, this was his best game since the showdown. In his second game back from injury Ollie Wines also had a good game with his 103. As he gets match fitness back and his wrist continues to improve I am going to expect him to continue to increase that scoring. Matty Broadbent was another of our top five this week. This was his highest score since the North Melbourne game. He returned to the line up this week after being dropped and he came back strong showing us just what he can do. At $406k he isn’t the cheapest defender, but with scores like this he represents a lot of value.

We saw Karl Amon get his first game out of the green vest this week and he rewarded us with a 55. This added a further $19k to his score which means he has now risen by $41k overall. He is still fairly cheap at $161k so if you want to bring him in you still can. His BE is only 4 which is more than achievable. If he gets a full game he could earn you quite a good amount of money. In the green vest this week we saw Nathan Krakouer. He didn’t come on until early in the last quarter which really limited his ability to get you some points. He only got 25 which didn’t really help us and he dropped in price by $8k, overall he is up $122k but with his BGE at 62, there is the danger that he could drop in price again.

Around the league there are two big concerns that we have. The first being Tom Rockliff. After the game last weekend he tweeted that he had re-broken three of the ribs that he broke in round 1. This will see him out for a few weeks again, and more importantly it will be across the bye period. If you don’t care about your overall rank and are only playing for league wins then you can safely hold him as he should be back by round 14. However, if you are in it for the ranking then you will need to trade him out this week.

The other player that a lot of people still have (50.93% of all teams to be exact) is Mitch Clark. We have heard that he will miss at least one game and possibly two games with a calf injury. His BE is at 67 so it was probably time to say goodbye to him anyway. If you are one of the 5% that own Jobe Watson, just keep an eye on the teams, he has a groin injury that is currently listed as one week, but I have a feeling it may stretch into two.

Last week we saw the late withdrawal of Jordan Lewis, many of us had him as captain. This just emphasises the importance of having a good VC option as well as having some bench cover. We just never know when there is going to be something like this happen. Hopefully you had adequate cover. I know I was more than happy with my VC who was Fyfe and he had 150 so doubled got me 300 points! Adequate bench cover is often something that can suffer as the season goes on and we are scratching to make money and sometimes downgrade to a player that may not get a regular game. This can be risky and is not advisable.

I spoke to you last week about the bye periods and the fact that we need to now be upgrading players. This is the time of year where our rookies that debuted in the first couple of rounds are starting to need to be traded out. The hard part is some trade down options to make cash. The best options that are around at the moment would include Trent Dumont, Karl Amon, Keegan Brooksbly, Joel Hamling, Tom Clurey, Daniel Robinson and Andrew Boston. Just remember to make sure that they are named before you go and slot them into your team. I wouldn’t recommend trusting any of these guys on the field for you at the moment, but if they are a warm body on the bench and get a score over 40 they have done their job and that is to increase in value.

Hope your season is going well. Remember you can shoot me through any questions on Twitter to @pkd73 and I will endeavour to answer them if I can. Also keep an eye on the teams as well as social media this week with all of the injury concerns around the place this week!