Is Fletcher Sharpe worth a trade this week?

There's a brand new WFB cheapie on the market thanks to the arrival of Knights rookie Fletcher Sharpe, but is he the must-have that he appears on paper?

By unseating David Armstrong as Newcastle's preferred back-up No.1, Sharpe has delivered a huge blow to the around 67,000 Fantasy coaches who owned Armstrong at the start of the week.

At the time of writing 11,000 coaches have already jumped off Armstrong, with a fair chunk of them likely to have gone straight to Sharpe, who at $264,000 is $225,000 cheaper and comes off an excellent 50 in his first outing last week.

But a closer look at Newcastle's bye schedule, and the impending return of Kalyn Ponga from injury, suggests there simply might not be enough games for Sharpe to make the type of money that would justify burning two trades on him as a cash cow. 

He's also not a keeper given the clear expiry date on his time as a starter. 

With the Knights having byes in Round 16 and Round 21, even if Sharpe plays every game for them between now and Round 22 when Ponga is expected to be available again, it will only amount to five appearances. 

The Round 16 bye also means he also doesn't have the advantage of being a cover option for you in a major bye round.

Five games will be enough time to make good money if he can average 50 or more through that period – which would see him make at least $132k in his next three games alone – but history tells us very few rookies WFBs manage to maintain that level for multiple games and he's likely to have a mid-20 or two thrown in there (his projected score for this week is 36). 

His first-up 50 also included 12 points from a try and line break, which won't come every week, especially given Newcastle have games coming up against top eight outfits in the Panthers, Raiders and Broncos. 

While it's more than feasible that Sharpe will surpass the $100k mark in value gained, which we use as a baseline for assessing cash cows, he's probably not going to make enough to justify using a trade to bring him in and then another to get him out at this point of the season. 

If you're flush with trades then it's a different story and he's a luxury punt who has a break even of -4 this week, but at the end of the day Sharpe doesn't look a must buy to me. 

Given the way injuries have gone this year, and with two Origin games still to come, there's likely to be late-season money makers or cut-price keepers with more job security who pop up soon.