The first week is always the hardest. The cravings get harder and harder to ignore. The uncertainty of how to get through the next few months can become overwhelming if you let it.
I am of course talking about the withdrawal symptoms being suffered by managers of fantasy football teams all over the globe as the big European leagues wrap up their seasons.
For those people fluent in a fantasy-speak (a language that includes terms like enablers, differentials and double gameweekers), the off-season can be a time where you feel as if there is a gap in your life.
Your week isn’t spent perusing the latest injury lists to see if anyone in your squad needs to be replaced. Your weekends aren’t filled with looking for the squad lists for the weekend’s fixtures. Your Monday morning is no longer a time where you anxiously await the finalisation of your score for the week, hoping that those last minute transfers you made paid off.
The amount of time and effort and frustration that this fantasy football can generate is mind boggling.
It will have managers hoping for a nil-nil draw in a game between two teams destined for relegation because you have a cheap defender who will be coming off your bench, and you need that clean sheet bonus to overtake your mate in your private league to win the monthly prize.
It’s a pastime/game/hobby/addiction that drives some managers to bring players into their squads from teams that are the cross-city rivals of the team they support in the real world because they need the extra 0.1 million in their budget to upgrade to players who are coming into form.
(If you didn’t understand the last two paragraphs, find a fantasy football manager to explain them to you.)
The version of the game I play (Fantasy Premier League) has grown over the last few years so that there are now almost two and a half million teams being managed each season. This is just one of the myriad of games available to play each season. In response, websites have been set up by fans tracking the latest movements in the prices of players or trying to predict the identity of the next player that every manager must have to stay ahead of their rivals.
Newspapers and sport networks all bring out their versions of the game before the start of every season hoping to lock in their slice of the fantasy football world.
It’s becoming an increasingly common way for media organisations and advertisers to engage with fans in sports like rugby league, rugby union, AFL, NFL, basketball and baseball, which is vital for capturing the attention of fans around the world in the highly competitive world of online sports reporting.
All signs point to the continued growth of fantasy sports management as a way through which fans will interact with their chosen team, league or sport.
So, as a community service to those who think they may have been spending a little too much time with their virtual squad, below is a list of some symptoms that you might want to look out for:
You might be a fantasy football addict if…
…you are a Liverpool supporter, but you really appreciate the attacking potential of Everton’s Leighton Baines.
… as an Arsenal supporter, you are happy that Fabregas is out for one more week because you have Nasri in your team and his potential to get a big score on the weekend just went up.
…you are proud of the fact that you waited till two minutes before the deadline for a gameweek to make your transfers as it allowed you to work out if your nearest rival had made any changes to determine whether or not you should take a points hit that week.
…you agonise over when the optimal time to play your wildcard is and what impact the introduction of a second wildcard will make on this decision.
…Blackpool’s away form becomes a paramount concern for you as they have four away games in the next five weeks and you need to know how this will affect Charlie Adam so you can work out whether to play him or drop him to the bench.
…at season’s end you talk about transfers not in terms of what it means for the teams involved in the real world, but how it will affect their point scoring ability in fantasy (for example, “If Samba moves from Blackburn to Arsenal, his clean sheet potential will go up and hopefully his set-piece threat will not change”).
…in discussions reviewing the season, you cite facts like the number of clean sheets being down and the lack of a clear lock for the captaincy each week leading to your score being less this year and your friends actually want to talk about why Aston Villa couldn’t get it together this season.
…you try and get the inside word on who are the key players from the promoted teams so you can get onto the bandwagon before anyone else.
…you write an article on fantasy football and submit it for publication on the Roar.
I’m not afraid to admit it: I’m a fantasy football addict, but I don’t have a problem.
I can quit anytime I want. But maybe I’ll just have one more season…
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