Uh, oh… multi-bye rounds are back in 2012

Just when we thought we saw the back of the byes, some more information came out today about the 2012 fixture. In a nutshell, we will have three multi-bye rounds in the middle part of the season. We’re not sure what this will mean for Dream Team as yet.

According to the information in this article on the AFL website, Round 11, 12 and 13 will be ‘reduced’ to 6 matches (instead of 9) which will allow 6 teams to have a bye. This will see all teams have a ‘bye’ over these three weeks (read: week off for a mid-season break ala split rounds prior to 2011).

Virtual Sports head dude Peter Jankulovski (@petejank) has been tweeting a few ideas on what we can expect.

There will be 18 teams in leagues. Virtual Sports will follow the AFL with the amount of teams in the competition for our fantasy leagues. This means we need 17 “roster” rounds and 4 “finals” rounds. This adds up to 21 of the 23 rounds meaning that it doesn’t work. Peter did tweet earlier today that there could be “Some trading funkiness for 3 rds to avoid byes?”.

He has followed up this evening with the following tweets:

To me, this sounds like we suck it up and play through it – league and overall! I like it! It allows us to be quick strategic through it for a game that a lot of people are complaining about being ‘too easy’. It is luck of the draw for who you’re playing in those weeks for your league games and all coaches  have to deal with it. Like this year, better Dream Team coaches were able to adapt. I am excited about the 3 way DPP trades (this allows for flexibility). I would be keen to see the team squads return to 30.

Very interesting, indeed. We will keep you posted as we find out more… have your say in the comments!