Captain’s Choice: what three options should you look at this week?
It’s one of the biggest decisions to make each week — who should get the armband? We look at three options for Round 2
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The most important decision when picking a skipper each week is knowing whether or not to utilise the Captain’s Loophole.
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USE THE ROLLING LOCKOUT TO YOUR ADVANTAGE
The rolling lockout enables extra opportunities to hedge your bets and maximise your score against your league opponents.
Now that Round 1, when there are no league games, is out of the way, you can see who your opponent has in their side and also who they have selected as captain. Once you know this, you can use that to advantage.
Simply have a gander at their team prior to the first game so that when the weekend’s games get underway you will be able to tell whether or not they have made any trades.
For the first six rounds of the season, the opportunity is there for multiple choices to execute the loophole. The most common one in Round 1 was to select Carlton’s star midfielder Patrick Cripps as Vice-Captain and have Grundy as the loophole by placing him as the selected emergency on the bench, and have a non-playing ruckman selected on ground as skipper — that meant that Cripps 126 against the Tigers became a 252. If you took that, you’d be happy.
The big decisions for Round 2 are around whether or not to select Grundy as VC against the Tigers on Thursday night and look towards the Friday night game towards the weekend to see what opportunities there are for execution of the loophole.
Grundy’s 81 points were doubled for those who had him selected as skipper in 14.3% of all SuperCoach sides in Round 1; he was the top choice for captains, ahead of Patrick Dangerfield, Nat Fyfe, Max Gawn, and Patrick Cripps — they were the only five players with greater than 5% captaincy selection. Those 3.5% who took Steve Coniglio’s 154 and doubled it would have been very happy with their choices.
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THE BIG C OPTIONS
RORY SLOANE | ADELAIDE CROWS | MID | $524,300 | 155 points in Round 1
Historically, Sloane could be the perfect option to execute the loophole on — captained in Round 1 by a mere 0.8% and owned by an equally desultory 7% of all teams, Sloane averages 113.4 against the Swans, including four scores of 120+ from their seven clashes, with a high of 140 and a low of 75. Selected by 0.5% as skipper in Round 1, yet in 27% of all teams Jake Lloyd (DEF | $608,200 | 131 points in Round 1) has only played the Crows four times, and traditionally does NOT score highly against them — he has never cracked a century, with a high of 94 last year his top outing against them. Similarly, Matt Crouch (MID | $551,300 | 138 points in Round 1) has a high score of 91 against the Swans from four clashes, with his average of 59 points per game against them the low for all his match-ups against other teams. If executing the loophole for the Friday night clash, Sloane is the man you want to use it on.
MAX GAWN | MELBOURNE DEMONS | RUC | $692,100 | 87 points in Round 1
Forget Gawn’s 2017 score of 27 against the Cats in 2017 — that’s the game that saw him tear the hamstring off the bone. Look instead to his home and away performances in 2018 and 2015, where the Cats simply couldn’t match his mobility and marking prowess, and his scores of 139, 93 and 146 in those years is a far better indication of what he might be capable of achieving on Saturday evening down at Sleepy Hollow. While he looked severely underdone in his 100th game for the red and the blue, here’s hoping that his 2019 output is more aligned with his 2018 performances against the Cats … missed set shots aside!
NAT FYFE | FREMANTLE DOCKERS | MID | $618,100 | 147 points in Round 1
Looking like he barely raised a sweat against North Melbourne, Fyfe cruised his way to a top-five placement in scores for Round 1, no doubt thrilling the 10.9% of players who had the armband on him. Historically he beats up on the Gold Coast Suns, with his average of 140.3 across six match-ups with them seeing his low score being a fairly hefty 116, with a high of 160 to boot. They’re his favourite team to smash out a mega-score, with four 140-plus point games in a row against the Suns over the last four seasons. If Grundy doesn’t absolutely destroy the Tigers on Thursday night, having the loophole in place for Fyfe would make plenty of sense. If you can hold your nerve until the last game on Sunday, then Fyfe is perfect captaincy choice.
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Originally published as Captain’s Choice: what three options should you look at this week?
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