It’s a pleasant evening in late February, you don’t have Foxtel so you can’t watch the NAB Challenge, Alyssa and Lysandra have just agreed to disagree on ‘The Block’, you’ve read the sports section of the newspaper, you’ve tinkered with your SuperCoach team…and now you’ve got nothing to do but go to bed before tackling another tough day at the office tomorrow. Sports fans – more specifically, AFL fans like you – are meandering through the anxious weeks prior to the launch of the footy season. This is when they’ll finally be able to put their life aside in order to follow their beloved club on its quest for glory.
For many footy fans – namely the type referred to above – it also means that the start of something even deeper is on the horizon: fantasy football.
Now, we’ve all got our salary based fantasy teams that we’ve selected in late January thinking we’re the only ones who heard that Dom Sheed has been “burning up the track” and Luke McDonald is a NAB Challenge secret that only we are aware of, but these games are beginning to turn stale and plateau in terms of their yearly improvement. Every AFL fan needs something new and exciting to help build the anticipation for the upcoming season, so it’s about time that every AFL fan experienced draft-style category fantasy football.
The two main keys to this title are indeed the defining features – a draft-style competition that uses a category-based scoring system (as a reader of this you should be familiar with the ‘fantasy football’ part). Yes, the big websites have tackled the draft-style game, but it has only been done with a points-scoring system (3 points for a kick, 2 for a handball, 4 for a tackle etc.). We don’t need to write an entire article to explain why draft-style competitions are being considered as a far more entertaining format than a salary-based system (oh hang on, I already did…) – so let’s move right along to the meat of the story: the scoring type.
Category scoring adds a whole new layer of analysis and expertise to fantasy football, as it forces coaches to give priority to players who specialise in certain statistical categories. Just like any Aussie Rules coach, you need players who excel in different areas of the game in order to create a balanced and successful team.
Ultimate Footy is the only website currently tackling the category format that was originally made popular in the USA – firstly in baseball, but quickly filtered into other sports – and is by far the most in-depth AFL fantasy competition that you will find for a long time.
In UF’s own instructional section, they explain category scoring as follows: “Teams go head to head each week to out score their opponent in as many of the 9 statistical categories as possible. The team who wins the most categories wins the match.” The statistical categories used are Kicks, Handballs, Marks, Tackles, Hitouts, Free Kicks For, Free Kicks Against, Score, and Goal Kicking Accuracy – similar to that of a points-scoring systems, but the aim is to dominate as many individual categories as possible, as opposed to simply compiling a total score.
Just picture the excitement and frustration as you’re glued to the screen on the evening of Sunday August 31st watching a meaningless Round 23 game that has no bearing on the AFL finals. This contest is seemingly insignificant on the surface, but to you, the performance of a few players involved decides whether or not you will be crowned the “Getting Amongst It” league champion for 2014.
Because the AFL doesn’t schedule the Round 23 games until much later in the year, I won’t be bold and try to predict which teams will be playing in this “junk-time” match – that’s not my job here (…let’s just say they put the GWS vs Bulldogs game in this slot – hey…I’m a Dogs supporter so this is clearly hypothetical).
Sure, any type of fantasy competition might induce some excitement from this game, but to what level of intensity does each style provoke? Firstly, in a salary-based points-scoring competition, the likelihood of a close finish for a matchup is reasonable, but is immediately diminished if both fantasy coaches happened to select the same players for the matchup. For example, say both coaches have just Ryan Griffen and Heath Shaw remaining for this all-important contest – what an empty feeling every time either of them gets a disposal.
Secondly, while a draft-based points-scoring style will solve the problem of cheering for the same players that your opponent is cheering for, it has a smaller chance of being a close game than that of a category matchup. In category scoring, the fact that there are nine categories involved means that there is more of a chance that you will be statistically close with your opponent. This is because there are basically nine mini-matchups within one game. For example, if you’re losing 2-7 (categories vs your opponent) but you’re only losing Kicks, Marks and Free Kicks For by a small amount each, then what is seemingly a large lead could be easily reversed in just minutes during this final AFL game.
So instead of yelling at your TV screen whenever a player involved in your matchup simply scores a ‘fantasy point’, you’ll be not so calmly but quite specifically throwing out comments like “Kick it Griff!!! Don’t handball!!!” and “Just take a dive Shaw!!! That was surely High!!!” – and of course, being in a draft league, you won’t have to worry about your opposition also having Griffen and/or Shaw.
The specificity of category fantasy is the most intriguing and exciting part. After each round of football, instead of simply targeting a “better player” (someone who scores more points) you’re required to determine which categories you are lacking in, or which categories you can afford to relinquish a few numbers from. Finding this balance is the hardest part. In the above example, you may have ended up with an easy victory in the Handballs category, but didn’t quite get enough kicks. An option here could be to trade out or delist a specialist handballer to target a kicker. This example also shows how much more depth there is to the trading and free agency systems. There are so many more factors to take into account as opposed to simply switching players for positional reasons.
In terms of the draft – tactics completely change. Rankings of players (generally outside the top 20 elite players who will be drafted high no matter what style of fantasy) completely vary, as category specialists come in to play. Obviously, the aim is to draft players who contribute to most categories evenly, but these are hard to come by. Drafts soon become a battle for players who excel in compiling particular stats as coaches try to load up, category by category. With so many things to consider in this form of the game, drafts never become boring, with various tactics being employed to the very end. The result is based on the work and preparation put in – if you enjoy crunching numbers, then you’ll be sure to succeed.
Basically, category style scoring is a different and exciting way to enjoy and appreciate what is already an amazing sport. Now we must wait and see if it will be given a chance to flourish and potentially become the future of Australian fantasy sports – just as it has become an evenly appreciated and participated format in the USA.
While this piece in no way means to overthrow or diminish any other type of fantasy football system – let’s face it, anything to do with footy is great – it simply encourages AFL fans to stay up a little longer tonight, sign up for a category style Ultimate Footy league, and put their real knowledge to the test. You never know, once you start, you might never look back.
- Mark Kenny
Follow @half4wardflank on Twitter.