Round 22 and the second week of Fantasy finals is just around the corner!
So who should we be eyeing off to lead our squads for a late charge up the rankings or towards a league premiership? Let’s take a look.
VC Options
Nick Daicos is the sole early target as he comes up against the Hawks on Thursday night. Earlier this season when these sides met, he scored 128 points and with no Finn to tag him yet again this week, we should be able to expect another quality score from the young gun this week.
There are a few more options on Friday night though, headlined by Jeremy Cameron. He scored 157 two weeks ago against North when he kicked 11 goals, and we should be expecting to see the Cats feed him the ball at every opportunity again this week as he chases the 100 goal milestone. Essendon have been the 3rd easiest team for key forwards to score against for the last 10 weeks, so if anyone is going to cash in on that, it will be Jezza this week. He already scored 98 against the Bombers earlier this year and will only be better this time around. He will be my VC.
Bailey Smith and Max Holmes can both be given consideration with Essendon being the 2nd easiest match up for inside mids for the last 5 weeks behind only the Tigers and they have actually been even easier than the Tiges over the last 10 weeks. When these sides met earlier in the season, Baz scored 136 from only 76% TOG and would be my pick just ahead of Holmes, who scored 131 himself.
As always, if you want to wait until later in the week to use your VC or your selection doesn’t work out, I have listed my top 5 options, in order, below.
Captains – Top 5
- Nasiah Wanganeen-Milera
Not quite the result we were chasing last week, but I expect him to bounce back to his monster scores this week. Richmond are comfortably the easiest team for midfielders to score against, as shown last week with Anderson, Rowell and Fiorini all scoring over 100 against them. He has already scored 112 against them this year, before he moved into the middle and started scoring 140+ for fun, so I expect him to dominate this week even more.
- Brodie Grundy
It is hard to go against this guy at the moment and there is no wonder why after he scored a season high 150 last week. That gives him a 3 round rolling average of 136, a 5 round rolling average of 130 and a 12 week run of 110+ scores. As safe as houses, regardless of who he comes up against. An easy fallback option with lots of early Captaincy contenders in the first 3 games this week.
- Max Gawn
Gawn was good despite slowing down in the second half last week on his way to 113 against the Eagles. This week he comes up against the Dogs, and Tim English is more than capable of giving up big scores to his opponents. This game is at the MCG where Max averages 116 this year, and last time these two sides faced off he scored 136. In fact he averages 129 in his last 3 games against the Dogs. He will be good again.
- Marcus Bontempelli
Bont didn’t quite get to triple figures last week, but he still played well and is in some great form coming into this friendly match up against Melbourne. The Dees have given up the 5th most points this year and last time they emet, Bont scored a lazy 135.With scores of 136, 146 and 166 in his last 5 games where he has averaged 130, he is certainly back to his best form, and should cash in this week.
- Jordan Dawson
This guys has probably been my hardest player to pick when he is going to produce a Captaincy worthy score or not this year, as he doesn’t always make the most of easy match ups and doesn’t always struggle in hard ones either. He has West Coast this week, who are the 4th easiest team for inside mids to score against this season, for the last 10 weeks and the last 5 weeks, so that is a good indication of where they are at in terms of matchup difficulty. When they met earlier this year, Dawson scored a huge 139, so with a tough decision to make on who rounds out my top 5, Dawson gets the nod.
