NRL 2020: NRL Fantasy winners & losers, Round 19

Author: Lone Scout NRL Fantasy guru
Timestamp: Mon 21 Sep 2020, 08:22 AM

A host of regular Fantasy stars struggled in a tricky round 19 with plenty of head-to-head league finals swinging on an injury or two.

It was a very bad week not to own the most popular player in Fantasy.

Winners

Dragons centre Zac Lomax produced one of the great reversals in round 19. Fantasy's most-owned player was a deciding factor in many league finals last week with a season-low nine points but this week he hit a season-high 86 to top all scorers.

Lomax shrugged off his team's horror 42-18 loss in the Hunter to rack up two tries, five busts and a season-high 32 tackles after moving to five-eighth in the second half.

Viliame Kikau (85) cut a swathe through the Cowboys' defence with a try, nine busts and 180 metres while Raymond Faitala-Mariner (74) nabbed yet another try in his season-high 74 in Canterbury's upset with over Souths.

Get Caught Up: Round 19

In the same game, Cam Murray and Damien Cook (both 73) had plenty of tackling to do while Cameron Smith, Jahrome Hughes and Mitch Moses all also finished on 73 to make it a five-way tie for fourth-best score of the weekend.

Daly Cherry-Evans (70), Clint Gutherson (69), Pat Carrigan (66) and Nathan Cleary (65) were among the popular Fantasy buys to produce solid scores.

Reuben Cotter (64), Nicho Hynes (63) and Campbell Graham (60) are proving useful late-season pick-ups while anyone who held onto Chad Randall (49) got a useful score with Kurt Mann absent.

Individual brilliance from Lomax gets the Dragons on the board

A glimmer of good news for Fantasy coaches out of the Cowboys game with Hamiso Tabuai-Fidow (35) notching a serviceable score in a week when most of his owners were forced to play him.

While it was hardly a good score, those who ran out of trades and got stuck with Jason Taumalolo would have enjoyed his early return, even if it was only for 32 points.

Losers

There were plenty of low scores from Fantasy guns, and plenty of those were injury-affected.

Shaun Johnson (31) is out long-term with an Achilles injury, David Fifita (30) will miss next week with an ankle injury and Roger Tuivasa-Sheck (35) with a hamstring injury, while Ben Hunt (38) is in doubt with a quad injury.

The Storm loss was bad news for the Tigers in plenty of ways; David Nofoaluma (13) was well-contained before limping off late and Sam McIntyre (10) copped an early HIA in the same game; Luciano Leilua (32) played the full 80 and still recorded a season-low while Alex Twal missed the game due to illness.

George Williams (8) went off early with an HIA, Tom Starling (28) came on later than usual and had a quiet game by his standards, Jazz Tevaga (29) was having a bit of a shocker even before he came off for an HIA and Tohu Harris (44) was also a little quiet.

Ponga puts Guerra over

Tyrone Peachey (34) and Moeaki Fotuaika (32) were both underwhelming for the Titans while Newcastle's big win over the Dragons resulted in captaincy option Cam McInnes (49) hitting his lowest score of the year and Mitch Barnett his lowest since the week he returned from injury.