NRL 2021: NRL Fantasy, Winners and Losers, Round 10

Author: Lone Scout NRL Fantasy guru
Timestamp: Mon 17 May 2021, 07:01 AM

A magical performance from Fantasy's best player lit up Magic Round while the crackdown on head-high contact and a few more injuries wreaked havoc for Fantasy coaches.

Winners

Nathan Cleary, take a bow. The Panthers halfback shattered his own record for the highest score in Fantasy history with a whopping 144. Cleary was in a mood early, fighting his way over for two tries to pass 60 inside 20 minutes. He racked up points as usual then, in the final minutes with the record in sight, crashed over for his third to obliterate the record. Safe to say it was a bad week not to have Cleary as your captain in Fantasy.

Elsewhere, the Roosters' big second half was good news for owners of Angus Crichton (87) and James Tedesco (80), with the latter arresting his run of price drops with an immense second half after scoring just 12 points in the opening 40.

Tyson Frizell (81) scored a late try in Newcastle's loss to Wests Tigers while Warriors teen sensation Reece Walsh only got on just before half-time but was unstoppable thereafter in scoring 74 in just 46 minutes.

Cleary scores from some second phase

Mikaele Ravalawa (78) and Nicho Hynes (73) scored well in the Storm's win over the Dragons while there were steady scores from popular Fantasy picks including Daly Cherry-Evans (68), Damien Cook and Jayden Brailey (both 64), and Tohu Harris (63).

Tom Trbojevic continues to pile on the tries and try assists, with two more of each in Magic Round, although with that stat line owners would have probably liked a bit more than his 59.

Curran puts Warriors on the board

Corey Harawira-Naera (57 with a try) is proving a solid pick-up and similar could have been said of Warrior Josh Curran (53) who was on track for a huge score despite being benched on game day but went off early with a potentially serious elbow injury.

Jake Averillo (54) continues to put up keeper scores in the tricky CTR position.

Losers

It was a bad weekend to own any players who answer to variants of Pap, Papa or Papi. Josh Papalii (34) was sent off for high contact, Isaiah Papali'i (37) had his first sub-50 score of the year after a quiet first half before spending much of the second sitting on the bench, while Ryan Papenhuyzen (8) made a welcome return from injury only to be concussed early on by Tyrell Fuimaono.

With a six-day turnaround, the superstar fullback has to be in some doubt for round 11 as well.

Without running through all the players sin-binned over the weekend, the crackdown affected the scores of a host of Fantasy relevant-players, with some still scoring well including Josh Schuster (57) and Lachlan Croker (54) but the same couldn't be said for Sitili Tupouniua (31), Jack Wighton (30), Joe Ofahengaue (30), Moses Mbye (27) and Jordan Riki (20).

It was even worse for possible cash cow Tyson Gamble, who had no trouble producing 40-plus scores in his first two games of the season but managed seven missed tackles along with his three penalties and sin bin for a disastrous four-point return right after plenty of coaches took a punt on him.

Gamble on report and sent to sin bin for high contact

And it was worst still for those still carrying Fuimaono, with his early send-off meaning he finished on -1.

There were a few other below-par scores causing Fantasy coaches headaches even without foul play involved. Brisbane's huge loss to Manly was bad news for the scores of Payne Haas (41), Tevita Pangai jr (31) and Anthony Milford (27) while Bailey Simonsson (9) couldn't back up last week's handy score.