Spy Talk | Chasing Glory in NRL Supercoach

G’day all,

We are reaching crunch time in the Overall battle for glory, and most head-to-head leagues are kicking into finals action.

So it’s do or die for many of us, and there is a lot to navigate.

Let’s get into it.

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Chasing Glory in Head 2 Head

In H2H leagues, it’s really a question of where you finished and how your squad stacked up this week against your opposition.

If you get a second chance, then you can look at it in a couple of ways.

The first is to sit back and see how you go over the round while saving trades, knowing if you lose, you get another crack, but if you win, you get a week off and essentially don’t have to make a trade for two whole weeks.

This would put you in a serious position for the title against your mates with trades saved and a focus on two weekends only to win it all.

On the flipside, however, you could do nothing this weekend, lose and be faced with elimination next week, so is it better to use trades now and lock in that weekend off?

The way I see it, I think it is best to see how you are positioned and react if required.

As the weekend unfolds, you may be cruising to victory, or you may find you need to make that key trade.

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A Farnworth to Gagai would need to be done by Friday at 6pm, or you could hold off and get yourself Beau Fermor later in the weekend (trade would need to be made before the Dolphins kick off Saturday at 5:30pm, but we will know how the weekend is going by then).

For those who finished lower on the ladder and face an immediate elimination, you can still use the same tactic of seeing how your weekend goes, but it you may need to be far more aggressive because if you lose then it’s all over!

In terms of captaincy I’d love to have a later Captain option in order to get an early look at a VC and then decide on captaincy over the weekend.

You may need to jump onto a different skipper to your opposition if you need a point of difference and look like you are going to lose.

If you do this do not give any indication and simply swap the captain a couple of minutes before kickoff in the relevant game (last 30 seconds if at all possible).

Alternatively, you swap him early in the day, try and get them to match you and then flip back to your preferred skipper at the last second.

There are many ways to get in your opponents head but just make sure you know exactly who the unique players are in your respective sides so you can gauge how you are going both prior to and as the weekend unfolds.

Good luck!

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Chasing Glory in Overall

For players chasing as high a rank as possible the big decision is whether or not to utilise final trades now or try and hold a few for the last 3-4 weeks.

It probably comes down to squad setup and who you are being forced to play in your playing squad this weekend.

If a trade or two gets you gun options to replace guys who may score sub-25 for you this weekend, then I think its best just to do it.

But given the lowest score drops out this year you can punt on that and try and get through with one bludger score.

We just don’t know if things will happen that cause your squad to have 3 or 4 sub 20 scores.

That’s the risk!

Each to there own and we really won’t know what is the right move until seasons end and we look back at the final few rounds to see how manic they were.

Last year was relatively normal, the year before was not!

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My Trades

I have the option to play one FRF short and take an AE (as well as a free captaincy loop) and I’m also a little short overall due to mass injuries so I can also trade Farnworth out or hold for now and opt to play McEwen or Harris-Tavita.

I am leaning towards this with 4 trades left:

Farnworth to Gagai

Looks great for the run home especially next week and not highly owned amongst the big dogs.

Koloamatangi to Haas

I’m not certain on this yet as I would love to make sure Haas isn’t a shell off himself with the injuries he has been carrying.

With the week off there is every chance he is ready to rock but gee I’d love to wait a week and make sure.

I just don’t know if I can stomach a Haas 90+ and then seeing my AE score 18 and then have that included in my score if someone else struggles in the wet or cops an early head knock.

So it’s likely these 2 trades for me as I also want to go hard and get a week off in my main cash Head 2 Head league and be able to put the feet up next week.

Decision to be made, and I’m off it that Haas is playing game 1 of the round because it has to be made today.

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Skippers

I’m keeping it wide open.

I think I may VC Tedesco into Campbell but I may flip it late depending on my matchup in the cash league and how the weather is.

Either way I’m going against Cleary and hoping the Knights can keep him sub-90.

Good luck all!

Embrace the good stuff and try to laugh at the unlucky stuff because both are about to happen to us at the most important stage of the season.

Cheers,

Spy