Like Christ himself, you imagine you can turn water into wine. With a trade here and a trade there, you can transform even the most hapless rookie into a 100-point-a-week leviathan. Mitch Brown can morph into Steve Johnson, Jack Ziebell can become Jimmy Bartel, and even little old Jared Petrenko might, with just the right amount of care, cash and diligent trading, grow up to be Brendan Goddard.
Optimistic about the future, you spend trades on new players as freely as Mark Philippoussis used to spend money on new cars and you convince yourself that the good times will just keep on rolling. But they don’t. They never do.
There comes a point, usually about halfway through the season, when the numbers just don’t add up anymore – when there are more holes in your team than there are trades remaining and it becomes clear that you won’t be able to change everyone. You sit back, you stare at the screen, and you realise, with a slow dawning horror ‘I’m stuck with these bunnies’.
The best laid plans
Nothing ever quite goes to plan when you’re playing Dream Team. For a start, there are injuries. Just when you think your backline is settled, Luke Hodge strains his groin, Andrew Raines gets dropped or injured or both, and Chad Cornes manages to hurt his leg in several different places at once.
Not only are some of your players hurt, others lose all semblance of form. Guys who you’d happily pencilled in as ‘keepers’ after the first few rounds start stinking up the place and haemorrhaging cash. Take Nathan Krakouer, for example.
Over the first five rounds, he averaged 82, went up $120,000 and it felt like I’d bought shares in Apple just before Steve Jobs came back. Then, it all went to hell. Over the next five rounds, Nathan averaged 53, missed a game, and lost $60,000 and counting.
Of course, I should have got out at the top – I should have pulled the plug when he started to slide, but I had other problems to worry about. Now, it’s like I’m at the stock exchange during a crash. There are thousands of punters with little pictures of Nathan in their fists screaming “SELL, SELL, SELL!” but it’s too late. My precious trades are needed elsewhere and I’m stuck with another spud.
This week’s question
I’m know that there are plenty of coaches out there who are running out of trades or whose carefully laid plans are beginning to fall apart. This week, I want you to complete this sentence – “I knew I was too trigger happy with the trade button when…” and then send it to dreamteam@afl.com.au, making sure to put ‘Hindy’ in the subject line. I’ll run the best answers in next week’s column.
Thanks for all your responses to last week’s question “The best Dream Team advice I ever gave or received was…” The best advice David Kainer ever received was “the first law of Dream Team is Dean Cox” and the best advice Lachlan Pratt ever gave was telling his friends that you could only edit your team after lockout. I love a coach who plays dirty!
Cheers,
Hindy
CEO and coach of the Hindsight Mayors
The views in this article are those of the author and not necessarily those of the clubs or the AFL.
