The fantasy football season drew to a close this weekend and we all get to sit back and wonder where it all went wrong, or for the fortunate few, how did they manage to pull off the win and how can I do it again next year.
So, what will season 2013 look like? What changes will Virtual Sports/Champion Data bring in? Who will be the first picked in your team next season? Is there a particular strategy that works better, for whatever reason?
My Dream Team season was a little flat and every time I seemed to get some momentum, I ran into somebody who was having their best week. The killer for me was the bye rounds.
The bye rounds cause a real dilemma and whilst the AFL has suggested they won’t increase the length of the season to give the players two byes during the home and away rounds, it may come in eventually.
How do we propose to smooth out this huge wrinkle in a competition that has over half a million competitors?
The best solution I can come up with is something I’ve believed in for a while now; keeping it as real as possible, seems to me to be the logical solution.
How many AFL lists have just 30 players? Why don’t they have just 30 players? Because you need more than 30 to put a team on the field every week, which is precisely my point!
What would be wrong with a squad of 40 players? Say five rucks, with perhaps 10 forwards and defenders and then the remaining 15 being midfielders.
You keep the whole dual position player system and maybe expand a little on that bracket – some guys this year were listed as single position, but spent a whole lot of time in the middle and vice versa, with certain midfielders spending a lot of time in the forward line, or occasionally defence.
I don’t really see an issue with this. You could lower the “magic number” – the multiplier applied to the players points average, to arrive at his price tag – and that would then allow you to fit the additional players into your salary cap. Pretty simple solution.
I would favour keeping it a little high to ensure “coaches” had to draft a more than reasonable number of rookies. It would also require coaches to look at some of the “mid-price” players that everyone seems to avoid like the plague.
To fit within the salary cap you will have to have a blend of guns, rookies and mid-price players, unless you want to punt on a whole swag of first-year players getting a regular gig, straight up from Round 1, which isn’t all that likely this coming year, as we don’t have a new AFL team to champion.
The other good thing this will do is further diversify teams/squads. It can be a little boring sometimes over a weekend, when you’re playing someone and they have 18 of your starting 22 and you’ve both opted for the same skipper. You come down to having an interest in four blokes over the weekend. Lot more excitement and following of games when you have different players engaged.
The other matter that really has come into its own this year is the “late withdrawal”. Nothing more annoying than having your opponent on the ropes and then Damian Hardwick or another decides he’s going to give said player the week off.
But hey, don’t tell anyone on Thursday when the team is announced, or even make a change to the selected side on Friday. Nope, we’ll leave it till a couple of hours before the side runs out.
It has played merry hell with a lot of people’s teams. You only have to troll the normal fantasy football websites to hear the frustration that comes to the surface when this happens.
It’s usually a good solid player that gets pulled, because the coach wants to give him a break, or he’s carrying a “niggle”. They’re the guys we’ve backed in for our fantasy team, for the same reason – they’re a gun, solid player.
What I reckon we need here is keeping it to 22 selected players to run out as normal but adding some flexibility to your second layer, the same as a match day squad – i.e. be allowed to pick three emergencies that come in for a late withdrawal, of the “like” position, rather than just were you nominate them.
So for instance, if you had Birchall on the field in defence and he was a late withdrawal, then you’re emergency player Ellis would play. Then if you had another late withdrawal, say Brian Lake, and you had Mark Baguley as a second emergency, given he’s a midfield–defender, he could then cover Lake.
If you then were extremely unlucky and had somebody like Joel Selwood pull out of your midfield after another concussion, despite being named on a Thursday evening, and you had Thomas Couch (if by some fluke he’d been picked to line up for the Ds) as a midfield forward, he could cover that absence.
After that, if you have any more, then you’re obviously picking too many blokes with injury concerns and perhaps you should hand in your whistle. At least with a decent sized squad you have a chance of getting some enjoyment out of your weekend, every week.
I might take it a little too seriously at times, but I don’t think I’m an orphan in that and with over 500,000 entries and Supercoach each season, I’m sure there will be more than a few people reading this article and nodding their head at the same time.
Maybe this is why registrations of AFL Dream Team are down 4.5 percent and SuperCoach down 6.2 percent over 2011 – and flat across the last three years.
Anyway, I’ll be interested in other peoples thoughts on the subject.
Hornett
Guest
Is anyone looking into a fantasy setup for the AFL similar to the ESPN NFL comp. where their is a draft instead of a salary cap.
bombers
Guest
the answer to both dream team and the real teams problems with injuries is to be able to replace them with a free trade for an injured player. This trade would automatically reverse when the player becomes available again. In the real AFL when a player has a game ending injury the team should be able to substitute them no matter how many go down. I remember there were many games in the last couple of seasons where one team was winning easily until they lost two or three of their players and then had no bench to give their midfielders a rest, then the other team ran away with the game as their opposition tired due only to injuries. This is not a good result for either real or dream teams and so auto subs should be listed in order without limit but, players replaced because of injury are ruled out of any further part in that game. The replacement would then add to the score of the replaced player as they shared a position in that real or dream team. Replacements need not be for the same position as in the case of a mid game injury you are not expecting it and cannot be expected to have like for like replacements but, a team would rather have a full bench than an empty one no matter what position they normally play. There should also be no limit for rookies trades as they get so few games and may rotate completely from week to week. If each team was limited to so many gun players, so many average players and the rest rookies. As injuries are covered as above, the number of trades for gun players could be very low, average players have moderate trades and rookies unlimited. Perhaps players may even be divided up into small groups where only one could be selected from each group and this would even up the teams while creating a diversity of combinations as well. Limits on the number of players from each team may also help with the byes. An alternative for the byes is to allow non playing players to score their expected score, which is usually listed before the round starts. These scores would only be used if your team had no players playing to fill a position in your team for that week. Another alternative is to a temporary free trade for that week with the trade automatically reversing after the bye. This would remove the need for so many trades.
Tom Dimanis
Roar Pro
Guns N Rookies will die off as a strategy next year, there won't be an abundence of Gold Coast and GWS rookies available, so picking the right mid-pricers could be crucial.
me, I like football
Guest
To fix the draw situation so that all teams play each round and every round and to have a week off is on the middle weekend of the 3 bye weeks, have one round finish on the Saturday and the next round to start the next day on the Sunday. The draw would be fixed so no teams play twice in the same round.
NeeDeep
Roar Pro
Wouldn't be a fan of the "temporary" trades, Tom. Do agree with you on the bye rounds though - they were really like playing "Clayton's Dream Team". The Drema team game you play, when you're not actually playing Dream Team. They were on the painful side and I must admit I lost interest in the footy all together over those 3 weeks, as I felt it had become more like a lottery and down to who could avoid the damage, the best. Also, an interesting point about the scoring system. I don't mind Supercoach as a comp and whilst I started my fantasy football life playing DT, their is a lot to be said for the uniqueness that Supercoach encourages with its different method of points allocation.
NeeDeep
Roar Pro
Your idea does have some merit, Steve. The Pro this year was a 15 man team - which whilst it looked a little odd on the screen, did manage to work. I'm not sure about the "sameness" comment. If you had this years salary cap (about $8.75M from memory) and let's say your top premo's were around $500K (slightly down on last year, to allow for a 40 player squad) how many could you afford - maybe 8 to 10? If you priced rookies at $80-90K, you could opt for say 12 to 15 of those. Means you have still got 15 slots to fill and about $3M to do it. This brings in the mid-priced players that eveyone avoids each year. Not everyone is going to pick the exact same premo's and rookies, just like they do now. And if you limit the trades to say a dozen for the year, you won't get everyone going bang to Zorko, or Gibson (like they did this year) if they have to be a little conservative, or they have a strategy they're working to. What we also have at the moment is the extremely popular "Guns & Rookies" strategy, in which you grab 12 to 15 guns and then 15 rookies - wallah, starting squad. That seems to work pretty nicely, but this is really were you get "sameness". The reason being their is a group of players at the top echilon and popular picks come from that group. Then with the rookies, the hype will centre around a dozen or so before the first round and most coaches will have a fair number of these players. Hence, pretty similar teams in the early rounds, with no "mid-price" players reequired. So, I reckon it will be quite the opposite - fairly unique teams would be my prediction.
NeeDeep
Roar Pro
Hey Warnie - if DT Talk Warnie, thanks for all the great info, thorughout the season. Played Ultimate Footy this year (as well as DT & Supercoach) and everyone really enjoyed it. Big difference was "drafting" your own unique team and having a squad of 40 players. We still found it very challenging with byes, injuries, suspensions, rookies and out of form players, to get a starting team of 22, regularly. But, this is where the draft was important - you had to do a bit of research and get the mid-pricers, as well as the rookies. If we have a normal DT & SC set-up, yeah, you lose a little because you can draft the same players. However, the salary cap having to be spread across a 40 player squad, would definately see some unique selections. You would struggle to pick the best 15 to 18 players, with half a dozen project players (mid-procers) and then fill it out with 15 - 20 rookies, who are likely to get regular games, evenly spread across the season. A more likely scenario (with the right salary cap & magic number) will be for something like 8 to 10 guns, a similar number of under-valued premiums, same again on the true mid-pricer (or premium rookie) and then finally 8 to a dozen rookies. It should get you a very unique team in your league, at least, and as such, I doubt very much you'll be lining up against the same 22 every week! The other thing to keep the level of strategy up there and to make it challenging and add to the likelihood of unique teams, would be a reduced number of trades - if you have a squad of 40, hopefully 10 to 12 trades for the year should be enough. I understand this is a part of the "game", ie. cash-cows, price rises and falls - but why is it so important? I don't think it should be as vital to the success of your team. Sure, it should still play a part, but just not the key part. Picking the right squad at the beginning of the season to me is the more important phase of the game and this is where the reward should come from - selecting the right rookies at the start of the season, getting the mid-pricer with an upside and obviously, picking the correct premiums. Our Ultimate Footy league is an on-going competition and we are now entering the stage of the year were we sit back and prune our lists to 28 and then come the NAB AFL Draft and rookie draft being completed, we'll top back up to 40. This allows us to look at the game all year round and more or less, do the real thing - manage a realistic squad. I also agree, a lot of people find it difficult to devote more than a passing glance on Friday afternoon, to their team. So, what I'm discussing won't appeal to a large percentage of the population. But, maybe worth some thought as a form of premium competition, by someone, be it VS, or the AFL ,etc. Imagine the joy of knowing you have Swanny (or Ablett, Boyd, Pendles, Buddy, Broughton) and you are the only person in the league that does have him. And next year, he'll be lining up for you and you only, again, to defend your premiership flag!
Steve
Guest
Why not reduce the size of the DT/Supercoach 'field' teams by one third or thereabouts on bye weeks being representative of the fact that only two thirds of AFL teams are playing each week. i.e. instead of 22 take the top 16 scores spread over the four positions (5 defenders, 4 midfielders, 5 forwards and 1 or 2 ruck). I wouldn't like to see squads of forty as it will only further enhance the 'sameness' factor that abounds in everyone's teams.
Tom Dimanis
Roar Pro
The bye weeks were really unenjoyable, annoying and ruined seasons, but finding a sutiable solution is difficult. An idea could be to give everyone 5 temporary trades for the round which then gets reverted on the conclusion of the round. I usually play Dream Team but also played Supercoach for the first time this year, and I found that at the end of the season Supercoach opponent teams weren't as similar as the DT teams I played (in a DT prelim I played we had 4 different players - ridic. PS I won). Maybe DT needs to change its scoring system in order to survive. DT players I'm in leagues with are already talking about shifting to Supercoach to make it more interesting.
winp
Guest
hi how come in your all australian team sam mitchel and lance franklin could not make ,i think something wrong with the way you have selected team,every one knows lance is far above any forward in the comp,any reply thank you,ps lance can play in many positions on ground.
TC
Guest
Yes, maybe 52 is excessive - the byes and injuries killed me this year!! TC
Warnie
Guest
52 rotations (trades) is getting a bit excessive... especially when that will also mean teams will become much more similar. Yes we can change things, but for this to happen the magic number will have to be lower therefore making the 'regular joe' punters not knowing half of their squad. This is going to be a BIG challenge for Virtual Sports to keep all punters happy.
TC
Guest
Agree that the byes were a killer. I think the number of players is right, but what we probably need is the ability for more rotations, say, enough to do 2 per normal round, and 4 per bye round, meaning 52 rotations for the season. That way, the byes aren't such a big deal, and you are a good chance of covering those rounds where all of a sudden four or five of your players have been injured. It sucks when you have to go into a round with only 21 fit players, you can basically kiss those 4 points goodbye. TC
mds1970
Roar Guru
Ultimately, it's a game and whatever obstacles are thrown up, the challenge is to get around them. I know it can get frustrating sometimes - one occasion this year, Joel Selwood pulled out at the last moment and I lost a game that weekend by a point. But them's the breaks.
Warnie
Guest
So we have a squad of 40 right? And then play 22? So we'll see the same teams as we don't REALLY need the extra 10 players on the list that you are suggesting. (Eg. the last 10 players on the list will be basement priced, allowing us to basically have THE best of each position on field... boring!). Also... there is a lot of over complicating the rules here. While you, and I plus another 5,000 or so coaches who would embrace this, there is a large crew that play for simplicity reasons and don't want something so high maintainence. I agree something needs to change, but completely changing the game play won't be a preferred solution for ALL stakeholders.