We’re introducing our first FanFooty player award, and one of the current co-leaders may surprise you.
I have been ruminating on this concept for a little while now. The idea is taken from FanFooty’s successful live scoring pages, which have become famous for the little icons next to most player names. indicating news about them, including form and injury status. Over time, I have developed intricate rules for how each icon is allocated and when, which are explained on the page itself as in the one for this week’s Friday night game, and I have largely followed these rules for every game.
For instance, the star is awarded only once per game, to the player who I think would be awarded best on ground, especially in the Brownlow. The gun, also awarded only once (except on very rare occasion!), is a more fantasy-specific award. The heart is usually reserved for players who play through injury or other adversity for a decent score. The “hot” symbol, known as the fireball or sun, is for players who are on track for or have reached a Dream Team ton. Finally, the garbage bin symbol is for players who rack up meaningless stats during junk time when a game is well and truly over as a contest… but those points mean just as much in Dream Team as when the heat was on!
Following these rules, I have decided to award votes for each game on the following basis:
: 5 votes
: 4 votes
: 3 votes
: 2 votes
: 1 vote
The FanFooty Superstar page lists all the votes by round and the cumulative totals. I was interested myself to see who was leading, given that I have allocated out the icons without reference to any award. Gary Ablett jnr has dropped behind with his injury layoff, leaving the ever-reliable Dean Cox and Saint Leigh Montagna in the lead. Montagna has racked up three stars, two guns and a fireball, while Cox has just the one star, a heart, four guns and a fireball. GAJ has three stars and two guns, with Steve Johnson in fourth with two stars, one heart and two guns.
I’m not sure if any conclusions can be deriven from any of this… perhaps those of you who are betting on the likes of Lenny Hayes for the Brownlow might take a second look at Montagna’s odds? Interesting to see that Leon Davis does not figure all that prominently, as he is currently second behind Ablett in the Super Coach Brownlow votes.
I don’t know what I’ll be able to do with the final results, as I’m not sure I’d be allowed to present the winner with his prize… and I don’t know what I’d give him anyway. A FanFooty cap, maybe? A permanent colour in the FF chat? 😀
TeamLactos
May 27, 2009 at 11:14 pm
Just My idea on the points scoring thingy.
Why not give every player a score from 44 to 1 based on there points for the game. eg. highest points scorer gets 44 points 2nd highest gets 43 ect ect then also give BONUS points for the gun, heart, star ect. maybe 20 for star 10 for heart.
Just my 2 cents worth. cheers.
BTW monty can i please be un banned yet. cheers
bendylan
May 28, 2009 at 1:43 am
benno here, having to use my username bendylan now that access has changed.
m0nty, i was just joking about doing it all for the love. it’s too much work for that.
no, i don’t go to those other sites and complain ’cause i don’t respect them much and don’t expect much from their site. dream team talk is all commercial and full of faff, the herald sun – we expect them to be controversial and their supercoach stats are way below par. and richmond? well they have to take gambling money ’cause they’re desperate. perhaps there’s a nice victoria st smack dealer who would like to advertise with them too.
i have complained about this site because this has been the best. the others won’t offend me cause i won’t be there (except tooserious).
@disco(UK): thanks for the explanation mate. once again you have added next to nothing to the discussion. my point was that a blog, in the same format as monty and mitchell’s, which even has monty’s pic on it, from an advertiser, looks to me like advertising masquerading as editorial content. next comes banning people who criticise advertisers.
while we’re at it, i’m not a fan of anyone’s partnerships with betting companies.
but that’s enough on that for now. i think the extent of this (varied) discussion shows these issues are well worth thinking about.
Disco DB
May 28, 2009 at 3:28 am
@bendylan – ok, fair enough. I thought it was pretty obvious [that the betfair blog was an ad], but I forgive you if you see it differently, and it’s fair enough that you don’t agree with advertising gambling. From my perspective, unfortunately advertising is essential to this website and FanFooty can’t pick and choose [just yet], so the website exists because of it.
Disco DB
May 28, 2009 at 3:30 am
@bendylan – BTW, @Disco (UK) is me.
djch00k
May 28, 2009 at 8:55 am
I can understand the clamour for more blog posts (I come looking for a new one every day because I value m0nty’s opinions/analysis highly), but don’t be too hard on him – they eat up more time than Stuart Dew eats chickens.
The one I write over at DT Talk can take hours to compile (I know, you’d have guessed five minutes given it’s crapness). A decent one, like Calvin’s Captains, takes a lot longer. There’s no way I could pump out more than one a week. Warnie does, but he’s a machine.
The point is that, as much as we love ’em, expecting m0nty to post every other day on top of the other services he provides is expecting a lot of one bloke.
bendylan
May 28, 2009 at 12:10 pm
by the way i’d be willing to pay to access fanfooty … 20, 30, 40 bucks a year – particularly if it removed loud popups and bogus betting blogs. i’d pay up happily if it reduced ads and made it sustainable for the bloke who makes the site.
sometimes it’s too good for us to expect to get for free – that’s why we get ads. well i’d pay to have them way reduced. any more money than that and we’d expect a fair bit more content.
m0nty
May 28, 2009 at 3:30 pm
Thanks for your support, chook.
bendylan: We’ve been over this, paying for FF hasn’t worked in the past and it won’t work now. There could be some sort of “freemium” model where some parts are free and others (like the blog) are pay-only, but I don’t think that would get all that many takers either – and I could see someone re-posting all the articles somewhere else to subvert the system as a form of protest.
To be honest, you blokes have enough of a sense of entitlement now, imagine if you were actually paying me for something! 😛
BTW, I am investigating some merchandise options.
stman
May 28, 2009 at 9:05 pm
Dt talk and FF would make one helluva site you all do great work , for something I get for free cheers
FIRESWORD
May 28, 2009 at 10:41 pm
realy good site monty