SuperCoach NRL Champ’s Last Word: Axe falls on Eels after Brookie shocker

THE trade shackles are off! Reigning SuperCoach NRL champion Sam Rohlf reviews the round that was and looks at the great upgrade options that are out there this week.

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ROUND two is behind us now and this is the week where the trade shackles are cut for almost all SuperCoaches. Depending on your team balance and the strategy you are running with, there are some great options out there this week.

I was happy with the way my scores had been tracking over the first six games of the week, even with the disappointment of having the V/C on Tedesco (113 points) and not being able to use it to loop.

Unfortunately both my non-playing reserves were in the Thursday night game (Lomax and Katoa) and I was gun-shy of captaining a back after my Tedesco fail the week before.

I went with Cam Smith (44 points) in a home game up against the West Tigers. The Storm had two players with milestone games (Slater 300, Kenny Bromwich 100) and are a club that pride themselves on playing for their teammates on such occasions. What could go wrong?

Cameron Smith let Billy Slater and lots of SuperCoaches down. Picture: Getty Images

We all know what happened in that game with the Tigers putting on another giant-killing performance, again playing with 12 men for 10 minutes of the game. I was one of the 27 per cent of coaches that put the arm band on Smith, and never ever saw a result like this coming. I’m 0-and-2 on captain choices this year and will be all over Trent Copeland’s Captain My Captain article for this week’s games.

I dropped over 22,000 spots down to a rank 17,443 after posting a score of 1122 points. Similar to last week, I’m content with the score as I failed with my captain choice again.

I also got the rookie lottery wrong again playing Isaako (30 points) over Kennar (58 points). Last round it was only a choice of one of the two and I really would have liked those extra 28 points.

LISTEN: TOM Sangster, Rob Sutherland and Dave Campbell give their final lowdown on arguably the biggest trading week of the year.

As I mentioned above, I was happy enough with the way my score had been tracking, all things considered. I wasn’t heading for a monster total, but a total that would have nudged me up close to the 1200 range. I’d spent an hour or so from lunch on Sunday planning my forthcoming trades. With my choices settled on for lockout on Monday, and six players involved in the first Sunday game, I sat down to watch my Eels go round.

Does everyone know the U2 classic “Sunday Bloody Sunday”? Over the next 80 minutes of football I couldn’t shake the second line of that song, “I can’t close my eyes and make it go away”.

It was tough to watch, but I know the Eels have a good coach in Brad Arthur and things will turn around pretty quickly.

In SuperCoach we have the luxury of being more ruthless than NRL coaches. It is for that reason that, this week, it is adios to Mitchell Moses (BE 109) and Jarryd Hayne (BE 73) from my squad.

OUT: Mitchell Moses. Picture: AAP

OUT: Jarryd Hayne. Picture: Brett Costello

They weren’t my initial trade-out targets, but that game forced my hand. Alvaro and Latu have avoided the axe this week, as you just can’t go losing buckets of cash at the start of the season.

With only $56k in the Bank, I needed to find a decent trade option for Hayne that will make some money quickly and leave a chunk of change leftover to upgrade Moses.

I had considered Moses to Watson but that would leave me with a five-eighth pairing of Cartwright and Watson, which wasn’t ideal.

At the moment I have Sami (BE -38) from the Titans locked down as Hayne’s replacement and the leftover money is enough for me to upgrade Moses to SJ. It was a split hair between SJ and Widdop with SJ’s dual position ultimately winning the day.

That’s what I’m doing this week with my trades. It’s a long season with many twists and turns to go, but my goal of adding a third key ring is far from over.

Good luck all for this week’s games.

Originally published as SuperCoach NRL Champ’s Last Word: Axe falls on Eels after Brookie shocker