At 3pm Western Standard Time this Friday, the AFL’s Dream Team site will be beset upon by thousands of coaches, all online to make one simple move - trade in Tendai.
It’s a move many had never anticipated back in March, as Mzungu and his flowing dreadlocks had burst onto the AFL scene with a series of good pre-season performances.
Costing just $97,600 and holding dual position status as a forward and midfielder, Tendai was the guy everybody who knew anything about Dream Team had in their team.
But an injury in the final practice match against West Coast put pay to those thoughts, as the 2010 Perth best and fairest winner was ruled out for most of the first half of the season.
Once fit, Tendai was rushed straight back into the Freo team for the round 9 match against Port, without a WAFL match to his name.
The only people who didn’t like this decision was Tendai’s WAFL club, which was deprived of the opportunity to watch its latest AFL star suit up in the red and black one more time before he ventured off to gather kicks for himself and Dream Team points for the rest of us.
Tendai’s first appearance came as a sub, in which he scored a respectable 21 points in about a quarter of action.
Last week against the Saints, he got a full game and duly delivered with 87 points to boost his average.
With two games in the kitty now, Tendai is one more match away from a price rise.
And he’s unlikely to lose his spot any time soon with Freo’s injury list about as long as Greer Garson’s Oscar acceptance speech in 1943 (which, for the record, went for seven minutes).
What this all means is that it’s time to get on the Tendai train.
Whether you want to make money and cash him in later in the year, or keep him as a last midfielder/forward or bench backup option, make Mzungu your man.
If you already have him onboard, then good for you. If you don’t, you know what to do.
