Rookie reverse: Round 1 selection highlights

The absences of a few key rookie-priced bench favourites are today’s big fantasy news items.

Turns out this year we didn’t have to worry at all about the VirtualSports servers. You want to know why? Because they’re not hosted by Telstra this year, that’s why. The VirtualSports techies have taken a leaf out of the FanFooty playbook – though admittedly we were copying others – and paid for a server or three hosted in the US for much cheaper than you can buy equivalent bandwidth and hardware in Australia. It’s not rocket science from a technical standpoint, but I applaud Peter and the boys at VS for managing to convince Telstra to let them go. In hindsight it has been an even better decision because the AFL servers have all crashed, even without the DT/SC traffic.

Tom Rockliff and James Podsiadly are the names that fantasy coaches have on their lips. In some way the decisions can be put off until tomorrow, unless you want to take a chance on Relton Roberts this evening. Elsewhere fantasy coaches got what they wanted, for the most part – Brodie Moles (on an extended bench), Jarrod Kayler-Thomson, Ben Howlett, Lewis Jetta, Luke Shuey, Ryan Bastinac, and of course the top four draft picks. No Kyle Hardingham or Jordan Lisle, but ins for James Strauss and Carl Peterson, not to mention a player nobody has talked about in Matt Suckling. In fact, the issue this year is an embarrassment of riches at most positions.

What did you take out of today’s news?