George West, with his team Mr Westy, topped the rankings with some great picks including captain Damian Penaud, Thomas Ramos, James Lowe, Juan Ignacio Brex, Gaël Fickou, Nolann Le Garrec, Ben Earl, Tommy Reffell and Supersub Marcus Smioth.
George ended up with a huge 556 points that round, so we spoke to him to try and get some tips leading into Super Saturday.
First of all, congratulations again on an amazing performance in Round 4! Are you a regular fantasy rugby player? How are you doing overall in this year's game?
GW: I am in around 4000th position because my son and I got our log-ins mixed up for the first two rounds and he was picking my team and I was picking his. However, I didn’t do much better than him in the first two rounds to be honest. I only then made three changes to the team from round three, but that was rushed as I had forgotten to do it until the last minute.
Did you have a strategy in your team selection or was it more a case of going with your gut feeling?
GW: I enjoy watching rugby and try to pick in-form players from teams that I think will play well that week.
Did you use stats to help drive your selections?
GW: I don’t look at stats, just knowledge of who is playing well that week.
Clearly your team performed from 1-15 but do you still have any selection regrets at all?
GW: I almost picked Dafydd Jenkins from Wales because he had moved to play back row and scored highly, and I almost captained Earl because he had been on fire, but I stuck with captaining a back and Penaud did okay.
As we all know, the Supersub can be the difference between a good game week and a league-winning gameweek. Do you have a strategy as to who you select there?
GW: Firstly, make sure that they are on the bench and then think about which players need to put in a big performance to try and force their way into the team for next week – this is why I went for Marcus Smith.
If there’s one single tip that you’d give to a new Fantasy Rugby manager, what would it be?
GW: I would advise that watching rugby and going with players in form helps.
Will you be changing your approach at all for Round 5? Any lessons you learned from your fantasy selection in Round 4?
GW: I will wait and see the team selections and probably pick my team on the way down to Cardiff on Saturday morning. I never make too many changes from the week before. My wife will tell you that I never learn my lesson!
Looking ahead to the Round 5 games, are there any players you have your eye on to bring into your team?
GW: I think that the Irish will be smarting so that game might be high scoring. The others are all pretty even so I don’t think that I will make lots of changes!
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