Diary Of An AFL SuperCoach Obsessive - Week 16

Monday:

Was in Sydney this weekend, so not only did I not have much of an idea of which players had gone well but I didn’t even know who had won half the matches. Got back last night, but couldn’t check the results because of the distressing AC Adaptor Incident. Therefore, a little apprehensive when I logged in to see the results this morning, but I need not have worried. Everything has come up ‘Phantom Lunches’ this week. Let’s review:

• Scored 2,209 points, which was enough for a 400-point plus win.
• Moved from fifth to third on the league ladder, and from 359 to 206 (out of 223,335) in the nationwide standings.
• Scored 140 more points than anyone else in my league this week. This bodes well. This bodes very well indeed.
• Richmond won by 70 points last night. Doesn’t make much difference to my SuperCoach team, but it puts me in a better mood.
• Brent Stanton scored 133 points.
• Gary Ablett, Brett Burton and Jonathan Brown all got injured. Why is that good news? Well, even though I have all of those guys in my team, so do a lot of other people. But the difference between me and them is that I haven’t burnt up most of my trades yet. Have fun playing two or three short, fellas! Burton is the only long-term injury, and probably the only one I will need to trade out, but even that has a silver lining because, you see, it validates my decision not to trade Tippett or Rioli for O’Keefe last week. Now I can trade Burton for O’Keefe, and Tippett will become more of a focal point for Adelaide with Burton on the sidelines. See, even the setbacks are going my way.

Yes, things are going pretty well. I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop any moment now…

Friday:

Completed the Burton for O’Keefe trade, but had to use up a second trade this week with Brett Jones also out for the season. After some consideration, went for Darren Milburn, who tends to play every week (yep, there goes his knee) and is a consistent performer. The two trades ate up some cash as well, but with five trades left and $70,000 in the bank I’m still in a good position.

Further upside of the Milburn trade was that it annoyed my opponent, Kelvin, who sits in the desk beside me. In SuperCoach, everyone has Franklin, Ablett, J. Brown, Judd, etc., it’s the rest of the players that determine whether you win or lose. By picking Milburn, he now has to rely on his lower-rung players beating my lower-rung players, which I don’t consider a likely prospect. Annoyed him even further by picking Matthew Pavlich as captain, after which he went off mumbling about he was going to change who his captain was now. I think I really need to win this match.