Symes out: back pain persists

It was rumoured earlier in the week that Brad Symes was having difficulties recovering from the knock to the ankle he picked up in the Blues game and it has now come to pass that he is officially out. It sounds very much like just a swelling issue to me, so it’s not going to prevent him playing next week barring further injury. However, it leaves fantasy coaches in even more of a pickle than they were before with the Chad Cornes/Joel Bowden situation, as well as temporary outages for Dustin Fletcher, Bret Thornton and Shannon Hurn, along with rookie favourites Darren Pfeiffer and Adam Hartlett also not appearing in round 7.

Symes’ breakeven is at about his rolling average this week due to the low round 6 score caused by the original injury, so it’s going to be tempting to trade him to cover short-term holes. However, for many coaches this will mean that other positions in their backline will continue to fester, such as Xavier Ellis who appears to have hit a wall, Nathan Lovett-Murray who is going backwards, and underperforming Eagles like Beau Waters, Brett Jones and Mark Nicoski.

If you can at all help it, I would recommend not trading Symes. He delivered two excellent scores in rounds 4 and 5, and his role is still one which will garner a lot of points in future. If that means eating a zero this week to save a trade, so be it. There will be plenty of other coaches who will be in the same boat this week.

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