The FanFooty forum is now up and running, with boards for Dream Team and Super Coach (including team, player and league sub-boards), Lethal League, Fox Sports, Premium Dream Team and FanFooty private leagues. Please be gentle on the software, each other and particularly me! (more…)

After asking for comments on the concept of AFL depth charts in my last post, I decided to go ahead and construct charts for each AFL team. With the help of posters at BigFooty in a thread on the subject, I think the charts are fairly accurate now for most teams. (more…)

Those of you fantasy nuts out there who are interested in American sports are well into the fantasy giridron season, with the NFL into week 6, with baseball just finishing up and basketball about to start again. One of the features that is a staple of fantasy analysis in the States is the team depth chart, and I’m wondering if something like that would be useful for Australian fantasy coaches. (more…)

I’ve already launched this on the latest edition of the Coaches Box podcast yesterday, but I should let readers of the FanFooty blog know about it as well.

Each AFL player is classified by Champion Data (official stat providers to the AFL) in the 2008 AFL Prospectus according to their position, their size and their role. For instance, Brett Burton is a medium-sized general forward, which means his classification is Fwd-Med-Gen. Similarly, Sam Mitchell is a small inside midfielder, giving him the designation of Mid-Small-In, and Sam Fisher is a tall key-position defender, meaning he has the code of Def-Tall-Key.

The Breakdown - there is a Dream Team Breakdown and a Super Coach Breakdown - is a table that lists the averages of each Champion Data player type against each AFL team in 2008, along with how many players have played against that team of that designation, with links to drill down on each score from each player against each opponent. The cells in the table are colour-coded according to their ranking: the lowest team average is coloured red, the second- to fourth-lowest are light red, the second- to fourth-highest are light green and the highest is solid green.

Those who are long-time listeners of the Coaches Box know that this kind of table made its public debut on the Round 22 episode last year, when we had Statsman74 on the show. Among the numerous spreadsheet screenshots he shared with us were two labeled DT scores by player positions and types - Part 1 and DT scores by player positions and types - Part 2, which are pretty much what you see in the Breakdown. Unlike those spreadsheets, however, the Breakdown includes links to the full list of players of each position who have already played against that opponent in 2008, as well as a list of this week’s relevant players.

The Breakdown is a powerful tool for helping to pick captains and figuring out which players are worth selling due to their rollercoaster coming to an end… or not. For instance, Dean Cox traditionally has a day out against the Swans, but even he struggled in the reverse fixture earlier in the year, and no ruckman has scored over 86 against Sydney all year so it might be time to take the captain’s armband off him this week. As we said in the podcast, it’s also an indicator that this week is not the time to sell Cyril Rioli because small forwards tend to carve up the Dons. It should also prove useful for those participating in the Lethal League or Premium DT competitions who are looking to pick up new players for a week or two of service: Michael Gardiner against the Bulldogs has a great matchup, as do small Kangaroo defenders like Gavin Urquhart and Ed Lower.

Enjoy!

Sorry I haven’t been blogging in the last little bit. There have been some shenanigans behind the scenes here, but they’re over now. I’ll try to at least keep up with the Bubble and Rollercoaster posts each week, plus whatever else takes my fancy.

And don’t forget the live weekly Coaches Box podcast on Talkshoe, where you can chat with other listeners and we take your suggestions for which players to talk about in real time. Another episode will happen tonight at 10.30pm AEST.

I guess it was only a matter of time. Oh well, it was good while it lasted!

I’ll keep this short.

Despite what I said the other day on this blog (sorry!), we didn’t get squads of 25 for Saturday games yesterday. By 5pm today, we will have teams of 22 for the Saturday games, and squads of 25 for the Sunday and Monday games. Yes, if your player is named in the starting 18 of a squad of 25, he’s pretty much locked in unless a late injury befalls him.

Speaking of squads, take NO NOTICE of the squads shown on The Footy Show and Fox Footy Teams last night. They are not in any way credible. If you looked at them closely you would have noticed a fair few retired and long-term injured players.

Where to get your team info? This blog will carry each the teams one by one as they are posted through official channels during the day. This blog will be updated before the FanFooty game previews listed on the front page, so look here rather than there.

Also, for those of you participating in the Fox Sports competition, be warned that the lockout for changing your team is actually at 5pm today, not at 6pm just before the games start. Sucks, I know. That info was taken from the email they sent out today.

And finally… rumours about Nick Stevens being a late withdrawal tonight continue to gather momentum. Radio SEN has been pushing this story all day, claiming now that a late betting run on Richmond is due to some bettors having inside info on Stevens’ fitness. Treat the whole thing with a grain of salt. Life is risk, my friends! If you don’t like risk, choose Byron Schammer, Justin Sherman or Ryan Griffen at much the same price.

After a week or two where the page for the official Dream Team competition on NRL.com carried a little message blaming lawyers for the product not being launched, they have now announced that they will be launching on March 20… AFTER round 1 has finished. This comes at a time when VirtualSports is still waiting on sponsors to sign on the dotted line for the AFL Dream Team competition, eight days before the season starts.

I am not surprised that sponsors are a little harder to find this year given the general economic climate, though one would have thought that Coke’s pockets would have been deep enough (suggesting that perhaps they’re not in the race this year). VirtualSports put the word out a month ago that this year’s AFL Dream Team prize pool was going to top $150,000, which means they would have to be asking a sponsor to fork out somewhere up to half a million smackeroos. I’m not blaming VS in any way, but they’re up against it this year to unearth that sort of coin.

Meanwhile, Herald-Sun Super Coach beat the official competition in raw growth terms and smashed it in percentage growth last year. Given that SC launched more than three weeks ago you’d have to think that it would get the jump in 2008. Could we see SC pass Dream Team in registrations? Every hour that DT is delayed, the likelihood of that happening grows.

Starting an official fantasy competition after the regular season has begun is a complete disaster. I know that NRL fantasy lags behind AFL in every metric, but that’s just pitiful. Let us hope that the AFL Dream Team competition does not suffer the same fate.

No doubt some of you know that I am a member of the EliteDre@mTe@mers league, which is the reigning #1 league in both Dream Team and Super Coach. I am privy to what goes on in the EDT private forum, and I have been namedropping EDT both here and on the Coaches Box when speaking about players and strategies. I don’t know how many of you subscribe just to hear EDTers’ thoughts through me, but that must be part of its success.

Understandably, it’s a bit rude of me to blare out privately expressed opinions to all and sundry, particularly at this very sensitive stage of the fantasy footy year when everyone’s trying to protect their smokies. I have promised not to use the EDT name in vain in future.

The fantasy footy media is growing all the time, and there are more and more outlets for you to get your fix of dream team info, with varying levels of quality. I hope that this blog will continue to be the #1 source of high quality analysis. There’s no harm in mentioning players for whom the genie is already out of the bottle due to breakout preseason performances, because everyone knows about players like Craig Bird, Albert Proud and Jarryn Geary now. Some things will have to remain secret.

I got an email today from a couple of blokes offering to sell me naming rights on their AFL Dream Team league. Yes, you read that right. Someone thinks that it’s worth some of my money to name their league “www.fanfooty.com.au” as a guerrilla marketing tactic so I can get branding on VirtualSports’ Web site. What a crazy industry this is!

The price they asked was far more than I think the “service” is worth. I don’t want to reprint their email in full, but let’s just say their fee was well into four figures. They claimed it was just to cover their members’ entry fees so that they can offer big cash prizes to the winner, and the fee would only be payable if their league was in the top 10 leagues for at least 10 weeks.

I have to admire these guys, they have balls of steel. I suppose it’s only a matter of time before they find a willing buyer, but I think they might need to lower their price just a tad. What do you think would be a fair fee for naming rights to a top 10 fantasy league? Any takers for a number greater than zero?