The Trade Deadline: How does it work and what should you do?
Round 19 is the standard Trade Deadline for free competitions on TheBench, being four weeks from the playoffs and one week removed from the dreaded ‘bye-weeks’. This article focusses on what this means and what steps you need to take to make sure you are set up for a run to TheBench NRL finals.
What is it?
The Trade Deadline consists of two separate features on the customisable TheBench platform. It consists of the Last Trade Round and Last Squad Change Round. The Last Trade Round means trades are not permitted after this round. The Last Squad Change Round means changes are not permitted (cutting players from your squad) after this round.
The Commissioner of a league has the ability to set them differently, but by default (and in the Legends of League Competitions) they are the same date (Round 19). This means that after the deadline passes (at lockout of the next round, Round 20 – 7:45pm AEST), you will no longer be able to make trades or drop players to create roster spots. You can still add free agents if you have available roster spots though.
Where do I find my Trade Deadline?
You can view the settings for your competition on the left hand side of the Full Table. Simple select “View Full Ladder” from your Home Screen.
What should you do?
There are a couple of key moves any coach should look to make in the lead up to the deadline: ensure you have adequate depth at each position and create a roster space or two just in case.
As always, managing the trade deadline comes down to knowing your squad well. Bye-weeks are now a thing of the past and you can now concentrate on putting your best 17 on the park every week. You don’t want to be forced into fielding an incomplete line-up because of poor roster management.
The first thing I would encourage any coach to do this week is to go to your squad page and cut any dead weight. If you are carrying any players who are out for the season (Harrison, Fulton, Tedesco) or simply out of favour with their coach (Kingston, Grant) get rid of them now. This isn’t time to be sentimental and it doesn’t matter how much you think player X should be in first grade. Roster spots are valuable post-deadline and worst case you can pick Tim Grant back up when Ivan Cleary wakes up to himself.
Once the Trade Deadline passes, a potential issue facing coaches is injury or suspension to your goalkicker. Kicking point limits mean that most teams can only carry one frontline kicker and once the deadline passes you can’t simply add/drop another starter in. There is a lot of merit in having an NRL team’s kicker and backup just in case. The problem for many clubs is identifying who is actually the backup. I consider this step optional and am willing to gamble a little with this. If the backup kicker for your club is a player who rarely scores any fantasy points, is it really worth benching a scorer for a low percentage kicker? Maybe, but I’m not shaping my roster based on it.
The next step I’d suggest is to go into the Coaches Box, head to round 19 and name your best 17. This has the dual benefits of helping a coach work out who is expendable and seeing which positions are a little thin. I like to have at least one backup for the positions where you only use one starter every week (FB, 5/8, HB, HK) and at least two for the others (FR, BR, W, C). If you don’t have an heir to replace the oft-injured Brett Stewart or Justin Hodges you better have free roster spots and a quick trigger-finger to pick up any replacements!
The final step is to make sure you do have at least one (preferably two) roster spaces open. This can be tricky; it may mean dropping a player from your squad that is better than anyone in the free agent pool. Just remember that players like Curtis Rona might cover Wing/Centre, but a roster spot covers all positions. In the post-deadline world this can be valuable- I have Brett Stewart and Josh Dugan as my only fullbacks and you better believe I’m hoarding a roster spot for when the authorities come knocking on their respective doors!
Like the NRL, seasons on TheBench can be decided by injuries to key players late in the season. By this stage, you should have crafted a roster with adequate depth coverage and a free spot should sh*t hit the fan and everyone at a position go down. There is not much more you can do at this point but sit back and hope.
Ryan
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