News of the 2024 fixture has dropped and the start to the year is going to be different to what we’ve seen before. Roy, Calvin and Warnie call an emergency podcast to chat through the Fantasy ramifications and possible solutions. One of Cal’s ex-students, Colby McKercher, joins the show live in the studio ahead of next week’s AFL Draft. The likely first round picks gives The Traders the lowdown on some of the best draftees that we should keep an eye on for our Fantasy teams. The boys also chat through the most relevant off-season moves.
Episode guide
1:00 – The Opening Round is changing the way AFL Fantasy will be played in 2024.
3:50 – Warnie suggests we don’t play in ‘Round 0’.
5:15 – How the early byes look and possible Fantasy Classic rules.
7:50 – Brodie Grundy looks like a good buy this year, can you still start him with the early bye?
11:30 – Thoughts on whether price changes include Opening Round scores.
14:00 – Tips on how you can approach your Fantasy Draft league.
18:10 – Keeper leagues might consider editing scores and including ‘Round 0’ scores when their club has the bye.
20:20 – The mid-season byes follow the same strucutre as 2023.
24:50 – Colby McKercher joins the show.
27:00 – Calvin taught Colby at high school including another language.
29:30 – Where did Colby rank in Fantasy Classic this year?
31:00 – Colby averaged 11.7 in his nine Coates Talent League this year.
33:30 – Roy thinks a role off half-back could be good for Fantasy in his debut season.
39:00 – The most relevant players of the trade period are ranked with Brodie Grundy at the top with Max Gawn who will also benefit from the move.
41:30 – Tristan Xerri is another ruck to consider based on Todd Goldstein moving on.
45:00 – Roy has some thoughts on his bench ruck due to the fixture.
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C’mon AFL.
If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
The question is how much should the fixture influence our player selections?
Does it matter that, potentially:
Nick Daicos can return you 100+ points for 22 rounds
or
Tim Taranto can return you 100+ points for 23 rounds
Tim TarantoZac Merrett can return you 100+ points for 23 roundsBest 20 2 trades rounds 2,3,5 and 6.
Good Luck
While I like this idea due to number of teams on the bye, I think we need to keep the 18 consistent across the byes. Different numbers adds to confusion.
Completely understand we have many Calvin’s in our community, So this would then indicate best 18 and three trades for each of the 8 bye rounds?
Good Luck in 2024
Probably 2 trades for the early bye rounds. The only confusion there is because we had that annoying 2 game bye round this year (and will again).
But early bye rounds wouldn’t/shouldn’t need 3 trades.
Still a bit to be discussed at the table for the big dogs.
Thanks for the podcast. Gives a better idea of what is more likely to happen.
If opening round is out of fantasy and there is the reduced field best 18 (2 trade structure as opposed to 3 or more) for the early round byes as per podcast…. This would no doubt work and be simple but why would you pick a player from one of the opening round 8 teams unless you felt you were going to miss out on some huge price increase over that period or at least till they had their makeup bye. Is this not the big risk -the early round teams are mainly made from 10 teams players only and hence may be ultra similar? is this desirable and inclusive for coaches that want to pick their favorite team players rather than be restricted?
Maybe the strategy changes to just picking the best low cost cash cows from these 8 opening round teams as you know their going to be missing an early round and can easily afford them off field. But how do you suddenly afford the opening round premiums post RD 6 and how can you even get them if only 2 trades early. Myriad of conundrums.
Also great to mention Gawn/Grundy as trade or trade beneficiary targets-totally….but Hey their playing against each other in opening round. If this opening round is out are we then picking them for round 1 (and price-altered or not altered?) given that they will both miss a game shortly. Good God!!!!!!
Clearly the AFL don’t give a rats toss bag about us fantasy players. Surely it makes sense to have weeks 1/2 as a split round.
The AFL wants to take the game to the Northern states. All four of those teams have been in the comp for 10 years plus, so I think the population of the Northern states are aware that the AFL exists. I’m not expecting the number of fantasy players to rise next season, might be a lot pull the pin though.🤷♂️
Split rounds would have been so much more preferable.
Being a Queenslander, I can honestly say that we know the AFL exists.
Having lived in Sydney, I can confidently say that they know the AFL exists; however, they prefer to watch their sport on TV, which is why NRL crowds can be very poor.
I don’t really think the experiment is going to make a change in Sydney’s apathetic approach to sport. It could, however, change the AFL Fantasy participation rate.
I think opening round may not be so much about promotion of the game in QLD and NSW overall. I agree this is well-established and opening round won’t make that much difference overall. I think it might be more about one-off revenue to NSW and QLD and squaring the revenue balance sheet of gather round being in Adelaide. WA might be in grievance now and so it would not surprise if something happened here 2025.
It is what it is and can’t be changed this year. However, the best solution for fantasy 2024 is the problem. Keeping it simple is key but what is simple to administer does not mean that it translates to simple to play. For example, taking out opening round is a simple solution, but I think it may make the game strategy really complex to play.
What I think is really the Fantasy problem of not including opening round somehow is the following:
I don’t think the argument of people missing making a team for opening round is valid. You nominate and advertise a starting date to which people need to work to -simple as that.
Whatever happens we are all in the same system and so it will be an even playing field and chance to score to a hat or car. Most of us are not in this league of player anyway. However, we don’t want to see much frustration, loss of enrolment and a large percentage of coaches just dropping their teams before the season is half-way over as it is just too hard to do well or improve your position.
I just hate the idea of removing the first 4 games from the fantasy season, it’s just like playing a premiership game and not awarding 4 points to the winner. Surely the way to go is to make it a free hit for round 0. Pick your squad for round 0 from 8 teams, normal scoring, then unlimited trades into round 1, and then normal rules from there. Everyone will know AFL starts on March 7th, surely everyone will think that’s when AFL fantasy starts too? You might lose more casual players by not starting it in round 0. Shouldn’t need much IT work for that solution either.
As for the early bye rounds, with only 2 teams not playing, I’m not bothered if its best 18 or 3 trades. Or even best 22 and 2 trades I’d be OK with. All these options will require different tactics compared to past seasons.
Agree about sentiments of removing first 4 games. A type of “Free hit” concept I don’t mind as part of a solution, think it’s better than no opening round, but not sure it’s the whole solution to player inequity.
The greatest tragedy for me is that almost half (44.5%) of teams and players will have a handicap of having 2 byes instead of 1 and as such you largely remove them from viable early selection and by the time you can select them, they may have lost their value and/or you just are not in a position to buy them. Also given the teams involved I think it would be >50% of what would have otherwise (normally) been popular or well-informed starting selections.
How can you solve this “handicap” problem playing all rounds with viable early access to all players in equity across coaches and keeping it fairly simple- the Holy Grail?
How could a coach pick say “Brodie Grundy” from the gecko and not be disadvantaged by several thousand dollars sitting on the bench in round 5? The only thing I can think of is doing something around taking their opening round score and moving it to round 5 or alternatively being able to use their average at this time. The key is a system creating a virtual removal of the extra early bye.
It’s only been 3 months, but boy I’ve missed the bants. Great content guys, even in the off-season!
I don’t listen to podcasts so this may not seem earthshaking but
the only reasonably fair solution is fantasy starts Rd 1.
Those who have already played receive a discount of approx. 5% but my maths are likely wrong.
Let those who have created the mess clean it up.
I don’t mind that idea of giving players who play fewer games (ie. R0 players) some kind of discount. But I’m kinda against ‘artificially’ adjusting prices. I’ll drop that into a meeting to see what the ideas are from the big dogs.
There’s a bit going on here… I’ll try to address some of it.
Why not play Opening Round?
‘People missing round zero’ isn’t about us… and it’s probably not the exact reason (I probably haven’t articulated it well if that’s how it is coming out). More about the opportunity to get more people. Heaps sign up after the Thursday night game to open the season usually. Same goes for Tipping, etc. It doesn’t creep up for us, but I can guarantee it does for casuals – probably who we want to be encouraging to get involved with Fantasy. The March 7 start, eve of long weekend, will further comound this IMO (and the opinion of the bean counters who are much more privvy to numbers than I).
Also – I don’t like the idea of starting a season with just 4 games. Yes, we could have some form of Round 0 start with a best 18, unlimited trades after, etc…
If we were to start R0, we would HAVE to have unlimited trades between these rounds. There would be no other way (unless it is super friggen confusing – which is EXACTLY why we don’t want to start R0). So if we have unlimited trades after R0, then all those issues with ‘not picking players who have an early bye’ are still there.
This is why there are ideas thrown around about how to attack the round 2, 3, 5, 6 byes. A best 18 is generous – as would be an alternative of 3 trades – but that would help take away from the absolute NO GO on starting a R0 player. They are feasible to start … and therefore, trade if you wanted to for strategy.
The Grundy example is a good one. He’s value … and you can start him. You could trade at his bye … or bench him. With a best 18, you have more opportunity to do that.
Also – I would like to shoot down any ‘take opening round scores and put them on players in their bye round’ talk. While this can be done manually in Draft leagues (and a good idea), it is WAAAAYYYYY too messy to even consider in Classic.
There will be plenty more to come and ideas thrown around, but please remember – we want to keep this nice and easy for people to do… at all levels of engagement. Plus – we want the game to grow. I would’ve been all about playing Round 0 and finding lots of ways to try to take advantage for strategy… etc. but being closer to being inside the tent, I guess I am across the ideas of how we want more bums on seats playing (R0 may give us a great opportunity to recruit – people don’t miss out on a start).
Good coaches will find an advantage in whatever scenario is put up.
Every idea and comment is going to be taken on board by those who make calls. I think it is important to remember that we want to make sure it is all achievable to be done dev-wise (plus affordable), easy to communicate and doesn’t take away from the gameplay most coaches are used to.
I spent some time on Friday morning putting this thread together on Twitter. Might be worth a read. Possibly gives an idea of why and how I’ve formed my ideas around this.
https://x.com/warniedt/status/1725246201182957895?s=46&t=hlm3mAWX-0bSLRHM8X5G1A
I don’t understand why using scores from opening round to the bye rounds is “WAAAAYYYYY too messy to even consider in Classic”.
I mean how stupid do you have to be to figure this out? I think this makes it so much easier not more difficult.
Cost of development, how it is actually implemented … there’s more – including how it is communicated (this is outside of trading in known scores).
It is easier not to add ‘artificial’ scores rather than just leave it being played like the game is set up to be.
Having been a member of DT Shiva since 2016 it will be very interesting to see what effect opening round has on the start of the season. Opening round may also have a huge impact on how we navigate our draft selections.
Shiva (and Draft in general) will be interesting. Again, would be a R1 start for Draft leagues. Those early byes most likely won’t be called byes in the system, so we would play through them.
Drafting strategy will be similar to NFL, for example, where we just have to manage. My simple advice would be to add an extra bench spot or two and just make sure you are going to be covered across those early byes – or look to tank a week?
Some leagues will opt to edit scores (eg. apply R0 scores to bye players). This takes some work from the commissioner, but a possible win for leagues who don’t want to be shafted too badly – which is probably more important for keeper leagues.
That option won’t be easy for Shiva with 30 leagues … I reckon that would be a 1% option of getting up there! I’ll be planning to draft as normal with an eye on combos from those early byes.
For Classic. In summary maybe
Seems like themes to the bye inequity problem are:
Somehow virtually removing the early extra bye
OR
Compensation or an Incentive for picking a player with a 1 bye handicap. The compensation or incentive could be a financial or providing extra trades to deal with the impact of these players.
OR
Coaches just need to deal with it strategically (Risks game engagement though I think for various reasons)
We need to be clear that just reducing the field alone (say to 18) for a early bye is not an adequate form of compensation for an opening round player in your team at that time. There is a significant opportunistic cost with using one of your 2 trades to correct or having a large amount of cash unused on your bench. it might help your round score disadvantage and be part of the solution, but it does nothing to adjust your season score disadvantage.
Signing off from this now. Thanks for taking all comments on board Warnie -much to consider, good luck with what is a difficult task no doubt.
It might be a good year to take a break from Fantasy. My wife would appreciate that.
I’m yet to finish in top 10000 so next year will be more of the same from me
Well, this year was a shocker for me. With 2024 not being a proper, full season of Fantasy, I am not sure it’s worth the effort.
Don’t stress. 2024 will be a full, proper season of Fantasy.
It is just starting sensibly in R1 rather than trying to make up some weird beginning with a 4-game round that no one asked for!
At least this way, we are going to be able to pick a team that we start the season with properly rather than some convoluted side that we would wipe!
As with doing this R1 start and easy, accessible and simple rules won’t mean that it will be too much ‘effort’.
I’m sure you’ve heard the expression “when the going gets tough, the tough get going”.
Cowards!
I would like the strategy re opening round be:
The scores for all these 8 teams be saved to use later. In round 2 for example coaches would have the option of fielding any players from Brisbane and Carlton and the score that they got in opening round would count. The same would apply to rounds 3, 5 & 6 where the two byes are in play. The one proviso would be that these players could not be used as vc or C as their score is already known.
This way, all rounds up to round 12 would be played with a full fixture.
This should apply to both classic and keeper leagues.
As you’ve explained here, it does get more complicated… let’s put a rule in that you can’t make captain… there’s a lot in play to go with your suggestion.
Also – as mentioned in the podcast – there is an ability for you to use that rule for Draft leagues.
My biggest concern is the price movement of players, particularly rookies from Opening Round games. We are gonna have one or two who do a Nick Martin. If we don’t include OR score, the coaches who bought those players get no benefit while everyone jumps on either next week or, at latest, pre-bye. How you do this will depend whether the rookie’s OR score affects their price before R2. If we shift the score to their next bye round, everyone will absolutely own the best OR rookie scorers prior to that.
Alternatively if we score it then we have OR rookies making money faster than better scoring R1 rookies. If we make it a free hit you just buy every playing OR rookie, make whatever you make, then have a heap of extra cash to spend on R1. All options look pretty season defining.