A new year brings a new set of challenges for fantasy football, in the last season before the 17th and 18th teams change the game forever.
I’ll use this post to clear up a few things for 2010. First things first, the Fanplanner now has a Trade Group feature, whereby when you start a new plan team you’ll see links to “choose all” players for each position, and when you have players in place there will be little green icons with a fast forward symbol to access the same page again. After some consultation, I have decided not to enforce salary cap limits on these pages as I have done in limiting the players you can select using the old Add page, as I have been told that users enjoy the freedom to do with their side what they like. You will still see the salary cap amount on your Team List page if you want to stick to it.
I have added raw statistics – kicks, marks, tackles, et cetera – to the yearly tables for each player which are accessible through player profiles, like Dane Swan in 2009. This is a bit of a departure for FanFooty, as for the five previous years of its existence I have avoided posting raw stats. Part of it was respect to Paul Jeffs, the operator of AFL Tables, for his kindness in sending me the historical stats database that got FF going in the first place, and I still link to his site in all the profiles. Part of it was also not wanting to tread on the toes of other sites out there that did post them. I think it has been long enough, though, that those are no longer issues, at least for historical numbers. I’m still going to stick to fantasy numbers for the live scoring, if only because the live pages are filled up with stuff already!
I have been thinking about a player comparison function. Some of you might be familiar with examples of it that I haven’t seen, but the ones I have seen are fairly boring in my eyes, being just a two-line table with each players’ stat lines. Can anyone think of something more sexy than that? Let me know in the comments.
Alright, what else? Ah yes, some people have been asking for the purposes of the Fanplanner whether I should be including the donuts that the likes of Brent Harvey and David Hille got last year for the purposes of calulating 2010 prices. I can tell you that I went through the 2009 prices and there were two players who copped a donut in 2008, and both of them had the donut included in calculations for their 2009 price, so that’s the procedure I have followed.
Those of you who want to suggest other things should read the FanFooty 2.010 thread in the forums, where some things have been shot down in flames but others have been embraced. In particular, the Bubble Boy and Rollercoaster blog features will be turned into pages on the site once Round 3 comes around. If you can think of anything else you want to see on the site (within reason!) tell in the comments here or in that forum thread.
toodledock
January 14, 2010 at 10:01 pm
Good to be back, any ideas on when these things go live
toodledock
January 14, 2010 at 10:04 pm
When the HS puts supercoach up live?
m0nty
January 14, 2010 at 10:27 pm
toodledock, I’d guess you should expect early February for both.
cherries08
January 15, 2010 at 7:57 am
Great work Monty! I love the new “Group” feature as it isn’t as tedious.
chris88
January 15, 2010 at 9:00 am
M0nty – the trade group feature is a real bonus – thanks so much.
As per usual as well – thanks for the updates and info at this of year. Greatly appreciated.
Danger_32
January 15, 2010 at 10:59 am
Good stuff Monty, good to see some new stuff to read to kick off the new season.
I’d like to see a live chat room (like there is on game day) on here 24/7. That way coaches could discuss things on live chat rather than sit around waiting for a reply in the forum. I think it could be interesting on Thursdays and Fridays when coaches are finalising their teams and making their trades.
Also it will give people a chance to discuss players and footy in general after a game on the weekend.
Just a thought but i think it may be a winner.
Rob K
January 15, 2010 at 3:17 pm
All of the above are great. Good show, old chap. Now just looking forward to your blogs. One about who those are “training the house down” would be good (Scott Selwood is looking pretty good atm – I’ve read a couple of articles mentioning he will spend more time in the midfield this year because of his fitness).
On a personal note, Monty, you cop a lot of flack on Big Footy sometimes. I can’t understand why people complain about a free service so much. Especially on match days. I much prefer your real time DT scores to Game Day’s. Do you get pissed off when people complain about pissy things?
m0nty
January 15, 2010 at 3:36 pm
Danger_32, I have made the decision to not allow free chat 24/7 on FF because I want all chat to be moderated, which at the moment means me being the sole moderator. The chat tends to get fairly wild and woolly when I’m not there, as evidenced by a couple of games last year when I was attending the game in person. I don’t want that to be the norm.
Having said that, I do think Thursday night selection chat would be interesting, and Friday lockout would also be a good time. I’ll look into working something out along those lines… maybe as part of the Coaches Box live podcasts, which also have live chat.
Rob K, I do get annoyed sometimes, but the complaints tend to come from a very small minority, and those people have usually shown themselves to be less than credible critics.
Danger_32
January 15, 2010 at 5:36 pm
I had a feeling you would say something along those lines about the chat being moderated. Is there anyway it could be set up to automatically block offensive language and/or permanently ban offenders?
Even if 24/7 is a no go i think Thursday and Friday nights would be awesome, especially for those last minute decisions.
Fingers crossed you can work something out there.
Thanks again for all your great work!