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?

Since the national AFL draft has just concluded, now is a good time to update FanFooty’s player databases in preparation for the 2008 season. One of the things I have been doing is figuring out what positions to allocate to each player for the purposes of our 2008 competitions. In 2007 I had only given each player one position, but in 2008 I’ll follow the lead of other comps and allow dual positions. If you’ve got a moment free, please visit the team pages from our 2008 player positions page and leave comments here about what you think should be changed.

In 2008 we are planning to run not only a salary cap competition similar to Dream Team, but also offer free private draft leagues - which is why getting these positions right is very important!

To answer some readers’ queries:

Tom Nightingale, who has been writing the excellent Talking Points posts on this blog every week, has co-founded his own fantasy football Web site called Dream Team Hero. As of this week, he’ll be posting a truncated version of Talking Points to this blog with a link to the full version over on his site. I encourage you go to over to DT Hero and read the articles, there’s a lot of good stuff there. Also, comments will be turned off on the FF blog version of Talking Points, but they’ll be open on the DT Hero site (with some more stringent posting requirements).

That brings me to the other point, which is that while I have been very happy to see that Tom’s posts in particular, and mine to a lesser extent, have become so popular that they get hundreds of comments from all you passionate fans out there… there have been some problems. Specifically, in the last week or so there was some inappropriate language and even some racial abuse in the comments by certain individuals. I don’t know what possesses people to think that a fantasy football blog should be the forum where they can throw about racial epithets and libelous accusations, but let me set it out here. I will not tolerate any poster who uses bad language or racial taunts, I will ban anyone who breaks any laws by posting here (e.g. copyright or libel), and I have no time for anyone who wants to talk about non-fantasy-football related topics. Just because we don’t have armies of moderators like BigFooty doesn’t mean our publishing standards are any lower. (And let me thank Tom for his sterling job acting as unpaid mod for this blog up until now!)

Having said that, I am not going to remove comments altogether. I think that when the trolls stay away, the comments you come up with are very informative and entertaining. Good luck for the fantasy finals!

It’s going to be hard not to link the DT Talk video podcast every week now because it’s turning into a ripper little show, but this week I have more reason than most, mainly because I appear in it! After a hilarious skit about the Jimmy Bartel/Matthew Scarlett kick-to-kick during round 12, Roy sets out the tough questions starting at about three minutes in. I have a swing at them via satellite, and there are a few shameful revelations along the way.

Most of the rest of the show centres around Roy’s relationship with Nathan Bock, which has broken down after 11 weeks of romantic turmoil with more insults and tantrums than a Hilton family dinner. Uncle Chop Chop takes his schtick to another level with some advice for Simon Black on how to deal with the “Pink Pig”, a.k.a. Cameron Ling. (Note to all Geelong players who live near me: I didn’t give Lingy that nickname, you’ll have to look up Chop next time you play at Aurora.)

I enjoy reading the other fantasy AFL blogs out there, of which there are few and those that are out there tend to be rarely updated. DT Talk stands out of the pack as the second-best (behind us of course!) and they’ve gone the extra yard this week by launching a vidcast. It’s ten minutes of hardcore fantasy action with Calvin, Roy and W-Dog (a.k.a. Warnie), who appear to be Tasmanians who have imbibed too much Cascade Boag’s but in fact are bloody superheroes.

Episode #1 includes features such as “Overachievers, Happy-Withs and Axe Wounds”, “Ten Questions”, some highly appropriate pieces of advice for AFL players on whether to handball and how often to tackle, and “Chop’s Chopping Block” with a cutting cameo from a lovely, pleasant-looking lad called Chop. (Warning: a fair amount of colourful language, especially from Hutchy soundalike Calvin.)

I look forward to seeing more from this crew on their page over at YouTube, although I don’t quite think they’ll get picked up to work for official AFL outlets like Tom did…

Tom N, creator of the AFL Dream blog, has decided to join this blog to continue his awesome work with breaking player news, position-by-position analysis and everything else a fantasy coach needs to know. I’m sure he’s going to make this blog a must-read for fans of Dream Team, Super Coach or any other Aussie rules fantasy comp. Welcome Tom!

I seem to remember I tried this out before, but hopefully this time it will be here to stay. I’m spending a lot of time at BigFooty nowadays answering question, rating teams and commenting on various issues to do with fantasy footy and online AFL in general. This seems like a good place to record my opinions. I hope you enjoy!

Specifically, I would like to use this blog to answer questions for you, the readers (and hopefully members of FanFooty) on:

- Rate my team (using the patent-pending M0nty Fantasy Team Rating System)
- This player versus that player
- Who should I pick up this week in X position for Y fantasy dollars

Just email your questions to m0nty aaat fanfooty dooot com dooot au (that’s m0nty with a zero instead of an o) and I’ll answer them here. I’ll give preference to emails which state your name, and particularly to emails which include a link to your public Dream Team or Super Coach page (for instance, here’s my public Dream Team page).