The Final Word: Haas replacement, fullback solutions, skippers

With just five weeks left to play out in the regular season many Supercoaches are looking to make a final push up the rankings as we enter the first week of head-to-head league finals.

Traditionally this is a time of year where you’ll be using your final few spare trades to bring in the last players you want to own to complete your ideal final 17.

Turbo Irvo is sitting 200^th overall with just three trades left, which will be down to two after trading out injured Payne Haas who I, like many, brought in just last week in anticipation of a big run home.

My final two trades are going to be held onto for precautionary purposes as we know how damaging restings and injuries can be in the final month.

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For me the obvious replacement for Haas is Joseph Tapine who cranked out a monster 98 points last week with some extremely damaging tackle busting and offloading runs.

The Raiders still have it all to play for so I would only expect to see Taps minutes increase over the final month, as is normally the case for him.

Now I know a lot of people will be thinking, “Well everyone is going to buy him, maybe I should be looking elsewhere if I want to get ahead” I would strongly advise against this because it reeks of the classic Supercoach fallacy of trying to go against the best available replacement just to differentiate.

This isn’t to say guys like AFB and Barnett are not viable options, they most certainly are – especially Barnett if you can afford him.

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The next hot topic that I see a lot of people struggling with around the grounds is who to pair James Tedesco with at fullback for the final five weeks.       

In the blue corner we have Tommy Turbo and in the red corner we have Kalyn Ponga.

Both guys are absolute stalwarts of Supercoach and through the years the decision on who to own hasn’t gotten any easier for any of us.

Turbo has the hamstrings, KP has the concussions, the Knights are good, Manly are bad, Manly are good, the Knights are bad, KP has the kicking, KP doesn’t have the kicking – you get the point, there are a lot of variables that come into play when choosing between them.

I personally made my bed to own Turbo a few weeks ago and so far, he hasn’t disappointed.

Manly look sharp in attack as they push for a top 4-5 spot on the ladder, furthermore Turbo looks to have regained a fair bit of speed and power since his return from injury and has posted some enormous scores that illuminate a big neon BUY ME sign on your Supercoach app.

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The Knights however aren’t in the best of form but are still a chance to make the 8 if they can string together a big final five weeks similar to how they finished last season.

If they are to in fact do this, then it will be through the marauding capabilities of Kalyn Ponga and his insane ability to break lines and put people into holes with bullet like passing.

In conclusion, if you want to make a final ditch play then you probably take a stab at Ponga, however if you want to take a more settled and consolidating approach then you get Turbo.

Now to a topic arguably more important than trades over the course of a Supercoach season – captaincy!

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Honestly though, who better than Nathan Cleary?

Since returning from injury, he has averaged 123… however I already know a lot of people will be tempted to vice-captain him and captain either Turbo or Ponga behind.

This is absolutely a justifiable play in any sense; however, I think this might be one of those rounds where it’s more sensible to straight captain Cleary and not need to worry about loop decisions, so you can focus more on sit vs start for your 17 and hopefully win your way into the next round of head-to-head finals.

Dez’s trades:

 Haas > Tapine

Captains:

VC – Fifita

C – Cleary