NRL Fantasy Scout, Wicky & Kyle Bedford will be bringing you the most important news every week to help you with your NRL Fantasy teams!

This week, we cover our key players to buy, hold & sell + recapping how our teams went in Round 19 & key notes from the 14 teams playing in Round 20.

Bye: Dragons, Eels, Sharks

Buys/Ones to Watch/Holds/Sells

Buys

Tom Starling (HOK, $372K) 

• Starling looks like a really good option this week, coming off the back of scores of 53 and 51
• His new role has seen him starting at hooker, and then moving to the middle when Levi comes on
• He played 68 mins in Round 17 (61 at hooker, 7 in middle), and 76 mins in Round 18 (55 at hooker, 21 in middle)
• With Zac Hosking back in the team, there is some risk that when he comes on, it pushes Whitehead to the middle, potentially taking away some of Starling’s ‘middle minutes’
• We are projecting a 65 min role for Starling going forward (55 hooker, 10 middle)
• Even if he doesn’t get those middle minutes and he purely just plays 55-60 at hooker, he is still incredible value at just $372k
• When starting at hooker and playing between 50-70 mins, he averages 46.3
• If he continues playing his current role, he presents as a potential cut price keeper, or at the very worst a great back up hooker

Payne Haas (MID, $830K)

• With the Origin period over, and Broncos down on troops and desperate for wins, now looks like the time to bring in Haas
• Haas is averaging 62.1 this year, but is priced at 59, so you’re actually getting a decent discount on him
• With Carrigan all but out this week, Haas should be required to play big mins and step up even more so than usual
• If you’re buying him make sure the person you’re trading out doesn’t play before him, just so you can reverse the trade in the off chance he doesn’t back up

James Tedesco (WFB, $823K)

• Tedesco is on absolute fire, averaging 78.7 across his last 3
• His price along with his points just seem to keep going up and up, and it’s hard to see either going down any time soon
• Off the back of a 97 last time out, his BE is just 31 this week, so if you want him now is the time to jump on before he has another large price increase

Connor Watson (MID, $786K)

• Watson has been in incredible form this season, averaging 55 ppg
• His average at lock however is astonishing, a massive 70.5
• Only playing small minutes in Origin, his game time should be very assured
• Add to that the fact that he may get HOK positionality next week, Watson looks a great buy

Ones to Watch

Izack Tago (CTR, $422K)

• Tago has had a poor season by his standards, averaging 38.7 and dropping over $250k in price losses
• The key thing here with Tago appears to be Cleary – when playing with Cleary this year he scores 50.5 ppg, without Cleary just 34.4 ppg
• Now that Cleary is back, and with a nice set of fixtures for the run home, Tago looks like massive value
• His BE is 30, so his price has pretty much bottomed out, and will likely start going back upwards in the next week or two
• Despite this, we would prefer to wait and see if possible as Tago’s prospects are pretty reliant on Cleary – if Cleary isn’t 100% and at his best then Tago might not have as much value as he potentially could
• Also Tago will be coming up against Herbie Farnworth this week which isn’t an easy match up, so don’t think there’s any rush to go out and buy him

Nathan Cleary (HLF, $860K)

• It has been reported that Cleary may play a slightly reduced role for the Panthers this week, splitting more of the kicking duties with Luai
• That news compounded with the fact that he has a breakeven close to 100, means that he is an easy watch this week
• Should be able to pick him up 50-100k cheaper in the next week or two

Josh Curran (MID/EDG, $579K)

• Curran has won Max King’s starting prop role, and should likely see similar minutes to what King usually plays (50-55)
• We don’t have much data to go off, as he’s only ever started one game at prop before
• He usually plays off the bench, playing mostly middle but also some edge, which isn’t an entirely accurate representation of what he’ll score at prop
• He’ll likely score low high 40’s, low 50’s based on our projections, which probably doesn’t make him an outright keeper, but it all depends on his minutes and how he handles the increased role
• Watch for now, more clear buys elsewhere

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Holds

Ryan Matterson (MID/EDG, $554K)

• Matterson was disappointing last week, scoring just 30 despite playing the full 80 mins
• He had 7 missed tackles which hurt his score a lot
• The promising thing is that he finally got 80 mins, and if he plays that every week he’ll definitely be scoring more than 30

Max Plath (HLF/MID, $658K)

• Plath scored 35 in his first game at hooker last week
• Looking at his stats, his tackle count remained around the same, the big killer was his loss of run metres
• He usually gets around 100m per game at lock, and last week he ran for just 19 metres
• Even if averages 30m per game, this is a loss of 7 points per game
• If you have a decent amount of trades then we think it’s fine to sell, but he’s probably a hold for the vast majority
• On the plus side, there were a lot of tries in the Dolphins Rabbitohs game, and Dolphins were fairly dominant, meaning less tackle opportunities for Plath
• Coming up against Penrith this week, he should see an increase in base
• Is some potential for him to go back to the forwards when Harrison Graham and Kurt Donoghoe return as well

Dylan Brown (HLF, $610K)

• With Moses gone for the season, Brown should once again see an uptick in base as he did earlier in the year when Moses was injured
• This season with Moses his avg is 40.1, without Moses it’s 58.3
• Looks like a decent hold, but for people looking to buy next week probably wouldn’t unless you’re short on cash due to Eels form + they have an incredibly tough run of fixtures

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Sells

Max King (MID, $675K)

• King is out for 6 weeks with a wrist injury

Euan Aitken (EDG/CTR, $695K)

• Aitken is out for the season with a pec injury

Mitchell Moses (HLF, $689K)

• Moses is out for the season after rupturing his bicep

Fletcher Sharpe (WFB, $364K)

• With Knights now back to full strength, there is no spot in the 17 for Sharpe, and he can be sold

Team Recaps

Kyle – Baby Face Leota

RD 19 Score – 486

Overall Rank – 851

General Thoughts

A tough week having run out of trades. Unfortunately injuries continue to hit which is going to make the rest of the season super challenging.

Being conservative with trades definitely looks to be the ideal strategy this season with so many injuries around.

With 8 trades for the run home, I’ll most likely be using all 8 on injured players which certainly isn’t ideal.

Trade Thoughts

8 trades remaining. 12 green dot. 4 injured players. This is tough.

I’ll probably dive straight in and use 4 trades on the injured guys – King, Tohu, Hynes, Aitken.

This will give me 16 players this round (but hopefully Cotter plays to make it 17).

The trade-ins I’m not sure of at this stage, but will have plenty of cash to spend.

I’m looking at the likes of Watson, Haas, Cleary, Starling, but will have a good look leading into game 1.

Alessandro – NRL Fantasy Scout

RD 19 Score – 674

Overall Rank – 2281

General Thoughts

Very nice week in Round 19, scoring 674. Gray and Trindall were massive successes as buys – Olakau’atu not so much. Benched KPP for him who ended up scoring more which was frustrating.

The Aitken injury hurt, and Matterson and Plath were a little underwhelming, but happy with everything else. 

Trade Thoughts

Big week on the trade front. Aitken, King and Hands are all clear sells, with a bunch of other guys being potential sells as well.

Going to try and hold green dots where possible due to the importance of trades so am leaning towards holding Plath, despite thinking his poor scoring will continue if he stays at hooker.

KPP, Weekes and Fainu similar story, will hold for now.

That leaves Olakau’atu. His 2 week suspension is essentially a 3 week one given Manly’s bye, which is a long time at this stage of the season where you want to maximise points and have your best team available each week. So I am most likely selling him despite buying last week.

In terms of buys, I am purely focused on bringing in all the guns I want and assembling my ‘final team’. Am trying to avoid mid ranger/value guys.

At this stage I am doing King, Aitken, Hands and Olakau’atu out for Watson, Haas, Tedesco and Starling.

Cleary, Grant and Yeo/Crichton are the other guns I want and will look to buy them in the next few weeks, and then my final team will be done. 

I always post my team and trades to my story before the round starts, so if you want to see what I do every week check out my page – @NRL Fantasy Scout on Instagram.

 

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