R0, early byes: what to know

AFL Fantasy will look a little different in 2024 due to the AFL starting the season in the northern states with just four games before the traditional round one start. Opening Round will commence on Thursday March 7 with Swans v Dees into Lions v Blues on Friday while Suns v Tigers and Giants v Pies will happen on the Saturday. Subsequently, there are byes early in the season.

Here’s all you need to know for Fantasy.

Fantasy Classic and Draft will start at round one

Having a four game Opening Round wouldn’t have been pretty for Fantasy. While there were some ideas bandied around about having some form of R0 free hit with unlimited trades to follow, the Official Fantasy game of the AFL has kept it simple by starting at round one where we will have a full state of games.

Early bye rounds

The early bye rounds that will feature over rounds two, three, five and six won’t be classified as ‘normal’ bye rounds. These ‘early’ byes will still be played through in both Classic and Draft. Scroll down for some ideas on how to deal with these in Draft … but for Classic, familiar bye rules will be in place with a Best 18 rule. This is similar to what we’re used to with the mid-season byes, but we will only have two (2) trades for these four rounds. An early bye detector will be available for Fantasy Coach subscribers to help them manage.

Opening Round scores will factor in Classic price changes

Prices will stay locked until round one, but when the first price changes take place after round one, they will factor in Opening Round scores. Those who play in both R0 and R1 and exceed their breakeven may have bigger price increases than normal.

Managing early byes in Draft

There are a few ways to cope … the most popular will be to just play on. That is, when drafting you factor in the fact that players from eight teams will have a bye in those early rounds and draft accordingly. Some leagues will look to extend their benches.

If you want to think outside the square and customise the game to how your league would like to play, the team at Fantasy HQ will be opening up the Edit Match Scores feature for free until the end of round six. Commissioners can adjust league match-up scores in order to fit their league’s ideas that may help limit the carnage. Remember this is manual – you may need to crack open a spreadsheet.

Some ideas on what you can do:

• Use Opening Round scores – Set your line up with bye players in place and add in your bye player’s score from opening round. For example, rather than taking a zero from Lachie Neale in round two, you can add his ‘105’ he scored in opening round against the Blues.
• Use player average – This was a solution for Coronaball where things happened super quickly (and mid-round). Some coaches liked this idea and may consider this for their bye players.
• Take best X scores – Like in Classic where we have Best 18 for the bye rounds, consider taking your best X scores. If you league have 18 on field, make it your best 16. If you league has 11 on field like ours in our 3-4-1-3 line up, make it a best 9.

Classic salary cap is $15.8m

As always, the official game likes to keep in line with the official salary cap. This year it’s approx. $15,800,000 so that’s what we’ve got. Up $300k from last year which is about 2%.

Magic number is approx. 9030

The magic number is the multiplier that determines a player price. For example, Tim English averaged 118.7 last year. Multiply that by 9030 and you’ll get his $1,071,000 value. This is the basic number that prices all players.

Rookie pricing has a slight change

Basement price remains at $200,000 … so essentially a little cheaper in general terms due to cap increase, albeit not by much. Harley Reid as the No.1 pick gets the $100k premium put on his price from basement, so he comes in at $300,000. The slight change is that rather than ever pick after Reid dropping $2k, this year it is $3k.