What are you looking at?  Well on the left you have Mr J. Brown and on the right you have Mr R. O'Keefe.  Place them together and you have SuperCoach GOLD!!  Or do you?

The Stats:

As premium forwards Brown and R'OK had stellar starts to season 2010.. by round three Brown was averaging 147 points a round and R'OK was averaging 132 points a round. Over the seven rounds since, Brown has averaged 75 points a round and R'OK has averaged 75.5 points a round, amazingly equaling each other's fall from (SuperCoach) grace.

By round three, pretty much every coach had them in their team. Those that didn't went on to bust their left nut trying to work out how to trade them into their lineup.  Everyone got on them at a premium price and to repay the faith, Brown and R'OK have consequently HEMORRHAGED cash.  Brown is down $188,200 from his round four cost, to a current grand total of $409,000.  R'OK is down a WHOPPING $214,300 from his round four cost to a dismal $385,700.

It's that time of the week again.. the teams have been named, Friday Night Footy looms and SuperCoaches nation-wide are telling themselves "no more trades.... after this week"... You might be fooling yourself, but you're not fooling me. I know that, deep down, you know that you're simply chasing points.  But hey, the more points you have, the more wins you'll get... if you're very lucky, you'll trade yourself into a shit-hot team that gets you right up to the Grand Final...  just in time for injury to crumble your team into a 1353 points-scoring-debacle.

Sound like the voice of experience?  Well, it is.  (I'll get you next time, Gadget).

As you know by now, the key to SuperCoach is to get young'uns and nurture them til they find their wings.  Very few first year players will turn into Icarus and fly so high they could lick the sun - so you need to try to identify the moment that they reach their peak, allowing you to trade them down to a new dirt cheap pine-warmer and use all that cold-hard-profit to upgrade a mid-range player into a freaking superstar.

A Word of Advice: while it is interesting to read the thoughts of the man pictured on the left (as published weekly in the HeraldSun's Insider), going off previous season's form - take what the guru says with a pinch of salt.  Apparently, being a SuperCoach in real life does not translate as brilliantly as one, (& that one being Sheeds), would hope into binary.

Sydney Swans have been hit with injury concerns on the weekend, losing both Tadhg Kennelly (minimum 3 weeks) and Daniel Bradshaw (minimum 2 weeks) with knee injuries.

Swans coach, Paul Roos, confirmed yesterday that Kennelly had suffered a medial ligament strain in the opening minutes of the weekend's game, resulting in his GRAND TOTAL of 2 points in SuperCoach, leaving the 110,682 people who have Kennelly in their SuperCoach teams delivering their very best verbal insults towards the closest television screen.

Personally, I lost my weekend battle by less than 40 points.  (Which would've been a win, should I have had any of my benched players on the field in Tadhg's place). Consequently, I feel it is my duty to report that the Irishman is allegedly in hiding after being mistaken at Mardi Gras for a toothed PENIS.  (Pictured left).

However, given Kennelly's history of being injury-prone, I guess the "Super"Coaches are the 200,000 people who did NOT select him in their line up in the first place.

For the full injury list ahead of round 10, read more.

The title "Hooker Blow Out" is probably conjuring all sorts of discharge-ridden imagery in your (rather filthy) mind.   Fear not, precious.  We're talking hamstrings not ham-wallets.  And, unless you are one of the 11,426 people who were duped by Hooker's amazing pre-season to the point of still having him in your Herald Sun SuperCoach line-up (like me), then this really isn't a horrifying story at all.

It is, however, slightly more horrifying if you, like me, had hung onto Hooker.  As far as mid-range backmen go, he's up there for reliability of a reasonably solid return for his price tag.  However, the question now becomes, is he worth keeping on the bench during his recovery or is he trade bait?

The answer depends upon a couple of factors:  how much depth does your team have?  how many trades have you burnt already? do you need to downgrade a player to upgrade a different player?

Initial scans are placing Hooker on the sidelines for up to a month.  Personally, I have Goose Maguire sitting on the pine doing nothing, so it's a straight swap.  If you need cashola, then this is a prime opportunity for you to downgrade to one of the up-and-coming backmen... which, sadly, there are not many of.  Brad Sheppard from the WEagles could be one of the few options available to you.