A couple of innovations introduced by the operators of the Dream Team and Supercoach competitions have tongues wagging in fantasy footy land.
The boys over at DT Talk have started their podcast early this year, and they have a bit of inside goss on changes to DT and/or Supercoach this year. One of these is a “partial lockout“, which will come into effect for extended weekends like rounds 1 and 2 with the Thursday kickoff, plus maybe the split round 14. The idea is that between Thursday and Friday of Round 1 you will still be able to trade, move players around, select captains and vice captains… in fact all of the normal functions, except none of them can involve players who have already started their AFL game. Most of the impetus for this feature has to have come from the madness and maelstrom of the last two Thursday starts in Round 1, which rendered the Dream Team and Supercoach servers unusable for most of the day before first lock out. This problem was due to a huge upswelling in demand by fantasy footy fanatics, which was not matched by a similar upsurge in investment in server resources by the AFL and/or Telstra to carry the traffic load on behalf of VirtualSports. While that’s still probably going to be true in 2010, and probably for a lot of Friday too, at least there should be some pressure taken off the servers for a window of time. Don’t kid yourself though, it is still going to be a bunfight on both the Thursday and Friday. Perhaps the best way to succeed in 2010 fantasy footy will be to set your alarm clock for some ungodly hour on Friday morning to ensure you can actually set your team up the way you want it! It will be interesting to see at what point on Friday the hammer falls and the servers whimper as they retreat into a coma.
The other innovation – though the DT Talk lads are still being coy about the details in the face of rampant speculation in blog comments and on message boards – is that you will be able to swap players with multiple positions within your team without burning a trade. This is a feature that is well-established in American competitions, especially in baseball. There are several ways it could work. The best way would be that you could do it in conjunction with a trade, i.e. if you have Phil Davis as a BAC/FWD in the backs but you want to sell Trent Dennis-Lane who is only a forward, that you would be allowed to move Davis from the back to the forwards at the same time that you sell TDL as a forward and buy a back as his replacement. I doubt that that complex sort of transaction will be possible, though. A more likely scenario is that you will only be able to take this opportunity if you have matching pairs of multi-positional players in your team already, such as Davis in the backs and Jarrad Waite in the forwards, or vice versa.
This change has a number of implications, if you decide to structure your team to use it. Doing that requires committing yourself to two or more dual-position players, which might be argued to be a limiting factor if you are ignoring better single-positionals. What would be the point of committing to two such players? The major benefit is in preventing donuts. A rookie-priced player like the aforementioned Davis could be put on your back bench and a Waite in the starting forwards, but if you have a situation where you have only 6 backs playing with Davis one of the ones missing out, but 8 forwards in games including Waite, you can even up the numbers to 7 and 7 to avoid the dreaded zero by switching Waite to the back to cover for Davis. This scenario is unlikely to come off, granted, but it can also be used when a player is just not delivering start-worthy scores, a la Taylor Walker last season, but is still valuable as a bench cash cow. Someone like Davis as a tall defender – who looks like playing a lot of games after Andy Otten‘s injury – would be a prime candidate for this kind of usage, and for this reason he is likely to be the most popular player to be teamed up to exploit this rule. Matthew Lobbe as a FWD/RUC rookie is the other who will likely be used in this way, in conjunction with Drew Petrie or Matthew Kreuzer.
The combinations which don’t include a midfielder slot are more likely to be useful under this rule, I feel, because fantasy coaches have bigger expectations about how much a premium midfielder will score than the other three positions. You could put a Ryan O’Keefe in the centres and pair him up with Patrick Dangerfield as FWD/CTRs, but the problem is that you’re guaranteed to have to use a trade on one of them because ROK is not going to cut it as a centre premium keeper even averaging 95 to 100, while Dangerfield’s ceiling is not going to be anywhere near a center keeper either. Swapping two starters is not the best way to use this rule, I feel, because you’d like to be in a position where all of your starters are potential keepers in their position. If you think Dangerfield is worth the trouble then it may pay off, of course. A similar strategy could be worked out with Brendon Goddard and Rick Ladson as BAC/CTRs. Maybe I’m being too cute with my paranoia over this strategy with midfielders, you tell me.
toodledock
January 14, 2010 at 11:14 pm
Does 20 trades with this swapping around, become to many?
Partial lockout- common sense prevails
As for the dual positions: I have goodes and the pav in, could make several players more attractive though. I wonder if this ability to change places with in a set team has a price on it, or it is a simple advantage of picking a two pronged players. Makes goodwin more attractive as well.
The limiting factor will come it to it big time Goodes/Pav OTHER consistent scores who switch positions will be the hottest property the fantasy football world has ever known. You will basically have to have these guys in your team.
I like it. I am no sure how it will be work out though. the thing I dont like is it means the good multi position players will be in every single supercoach team.
pav, goodes, kreuz
etc
m0nty
January 14, 2010 at 11:20 pm
The problem with a Goodes/Pav combo, toodledock, is that you have to put one of them in the centres to take advantage of it, and their scores aren’t going to cut it as midfield keepers if you want to win the comp.
toodledock
January 14, 2010 at 11:44 pm
I am still dont quite get it I think. I originally pick Goodes in the forward line. Then Judd gets injured. I move Goodes to the center and Gumbleton covers me as a playing emergency in the forward line. Not sure if I understand the concept yet.
PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT: you know the servers will crash, they always do, not having your team ready to before the mayham starts could cost you BIG. Going to have mine done 2-4 days before. There is a gap week anyway before the real season so form issues or anything wont come into it, get in early!
The changes sound good in theory once the full implications are clear one can plan a strategy. It is going to be a little bit of a challenge though. I like the idea and the evoling of the game.
good post monty, I seriously hope they have live super coach scores going somehow.
m0nty
January 15, 2010 at 12:46 am
No toodles, the concept is that if you want to move Goodes as a FWD/CTR from the forwards to the centres, you have to have a matching FWD/CTR in the centres to swap him with. If none of your centres have forward eligibility, then you can’t use the rule. Or so the theory goes.
migman19
January 15, 2010 at 2:47 am
m0nty, i thought the multiple position swap rule might be a throw back to DT of years gone by. I remember when you could have a player in a multiple position e.g Phil Davies F/B and select him as an emergency; If you have him slotted in as a back, but needed forward cover, he would also cover the forward line.
I wont be choosing based on this new rule anyway, it limits your selection and clouds judgement too much.
JedMack
January 15, 2010 at 4:55 am
I would prefer to see that the three emergencies cover all positions.
That would be more like footy is.
It would also give coaches more flexibility in team structures, allowing them to justify having 8 mids, or 3 rucks, or 4 backs.
hamisht
January 15, 2010 at 9:14 am
I would have thought that centre swapping could work with rookies. If Trengrove, Cunnington, Bastinac etc are selected in your mids you could swap them for a Goodes, Pav, ROK, Deledio etc.
Same goes for rucks. Say you decide to save some coin by going with some risky picks, Hille or Ottens or Warnock etc, if you have Lobbe or Trengrove on the bench ruck you could take another player from forward or back to cover.
chris88
January 15, 2010 at 9:17 am
I reckon one of the big benefits – perhaps the biggest – of the dual position eligibility is with the rookies and first year/94k players.
There are always a number of them included as cash cows or bench options in teams at the start of the year, but there are always concerns over whether “so-and-so” is going to play in Round 1, etc etc.
Maybe this is a way to get around that – for example:
Say I have a bunch of rookies in my side, especially in the mid and forwards. Many of them might be one position players – guys like Martin, Morabito, Trengove, Lucas, etc.
But say I also decide to put guys like Ben Cunnington (even with injury) and Ryan Bastinac in my side, perhaps also Tapscott and others too.
These guys are both C/F. What I do is stack the bench with these rookies – some in the C and some up F.
The hope is that one or two of them will play. If so, instantly I have “doubled” my bench because I have coverage for both C and F for other rookies who may not play early, but who are going to play and who I want to hold onto.
Say Bastinac (C/F) plays, but Morabito (C) and Cunnington (C/F) don’t. No worries, swap Bastinac from forwards to my mids and the Cunnington from mids to forwards. Thus I have coverage for Morabito.
This is where the real benefits will be – allowing people to hold onto rookies a bit longer at the early part of the season as long as they have other dual position players covering them.
m0nty
January 15, 2010 at 10:22 am
migman19, I don’t think that’s on the cards. It would be nice though.
JedMack, I am glad that we’re not in the bad old days when you could subvert the system to have two extra mids. That was cheesy.
incog43
January 15, 2010 at 11:40 am
Agree Chris88, this would be a great move for rookie coverage, and t least pulling a 40 – 60 rather than a donut.
Don’t think I would bother selecting premium keepers on this basis, but wait and see.
gus2gumby
January 15, 2010 at 12:46 pm
I think where this multi-position thing will come in handy is injuries.
Say I have a F get injured that is C/F eligible (say Goodes), but my emergency Fs are average.
I leave Goodes on the field, but swap him with another C/F eligible player (ROK?).
My emergency C then comes in to replace Goodes (Dustin Martin/Rookie) and gets me a few more points than my F emergency would have. I’ve probably gained 15-20 points without using a trade.
chris88
January 15, 2010 at 1:54 pm
gus2gumby – spot on.
I reckon the multi-positioning would come in handy not in situations involving just 2 players, but ones involving 3 players – as in the situation you describe.
Smart usage of the rule would allow you to, as you say, effectively move a centre to your forwards.
FairDinkum
January 15, 2010 at 2:31 pm
Gday, this multi player free swapping move is a good tool to have in the shed. i will not be looking to have players just to do this tho.. Chris88 makes a good point – with the popularity already being with those rookies with F/C eligibility, setting up ur team in terms of where u originate ur rookies could come in handy. is this idea a trial for 2011 when there will be an extra team as a means to somehow accomadate potential zeros when we have players playing in a team that has the bye??? if this is true, would we assume that in 2011 there would be a greater amount of players with multiple position options to combat the bye??
Extreme
January 15, 2010 at 5:21 pm
I reckon there is a chance that your bench this year will be non-positional, ie, 8 players from any position. Will make the multi-pos player swaping easier and add another dimension to the game > position cover vs premium cash cows (which are in the mids and fwds).
Nick
January 15, 2010 at 9:40 pm
I was hoping there’d be a non-positional bench, so all I would need to do is pick my required six players with a CTR, seven players with a FWD and BAC each and two RUCs to field the nessisary 22 regardless of whether they are ruckmen playing in the forward line, or defenders playing in the centre.
That’s the sort of versatility I hope is brought in. It would mean I could load up on centre rookies and multipositional forwards and backs to cover any “keeper” centres injuries.
freq23
January 16, 2010 at 10:45 pm
if this is the case monty im thinking the theory should be having a bench of young guns with the F/C B/C or B/F combination so for example:
my forward line bench is all playing and my centres are down for example say cunnington gets a week or so to rest an injury so i, not wanting to just bail out on the youth train but still needing an emergency or worst case a player to play on the field so i shift cunnington to my fwd line bench and move say ziebell to the centres on the field and a player from the fwd line bench into the side….
hope that makes sense
it adds a whole new depth to the strategic playings of the game, something i think will seperate the die hards from the rest
bradway
January 19, 2010 at 4:03 pm
This would be a brilliant idea.
If this multi pos change does happen which seems likely, there is no amount of glossy lift outs and instruction manuals that the Herald Sun could circulate to help the fantasy noobs like they did last year, which I personally thought was an absolute joke, some may not agree with me.
I did all my research manually during last years pre season,read my prospectus from cover to cover, sought out supercoach scores when they werent readily available in the paper, then 2 weeks before opening, the HUN gave every man and their dog, in a nut shell, every bit of research that I, and 1000’s of others had manually sweated over all summer long.
I am all for the the growth of fantasy footy but I also think that the newcomers should have to serve an apprenticeship and learn how to play the hard way through poor starting line ups, sideways trades etc.
redcalc
February 11, 2010 at 12:04 pm
Kreuzer is only named as a Ruck anyway isn’t he?