I’m confused. That page is from pre 2023 season?
Update: Thanks to the support of AFL Fantasy we are happy to announce that category leagues remain available on the Ultimate Footy platform in 2024. Note that a fee of $20 per team will be charged to support the operation of the game. No payment is required until after your draft is complete.
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Sorry for tardiness Blummers, survey completed
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No dramas.
The responses have been good.
11 out of the 17.
Just need ones from @topdon @Windy_Dill @Trotters @Alber_Goodthur @Jefferson.
And I just realised I left out @Split_Infinity on the original PM.
No major rush as we’ll probably go through the info throughout the week.
Thanks to everyone who has had the chance to complete the survey.
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Howdy all.
Thanks for responding to the survey. We’re going through the responses with the hope of finalising rules ASAP.
I’ll post the survey results here in the next few days so that you can see what other coaches were thinking.
I’m just getting some admin stuff out of the way whilst I have some time on my hands.
Squads as ripped of thebench are in this thread:
I’ll sort out which teams need to trim their list prior to the trade period over the coming few days.
Upcoming Draft thread is here:
I’ll update it once I’ve worked out who traded away picks during the last few trade periods.
We should be able to to update you on the rules, team selection, platform, etc by early next week.
We’ve just realised that there is very little time between end of pre-season and Opening Round. So it screws up some of the timelines we’re used to.
We still need a trade period, then a draft, then Opening Round. They just might be a tad more compressed than previous seasons being mindful that we’re sorting out the platform, new coaches and modified rules before then so no one is disadvantaged.
Due to this compressed timeline, we’re leaning towards using the AFL Fantasy platform for the upcoming season.
@Split_Infinity
You’ll have your choice of which team you want to take over. Either the reigning premier Dunlop or the Wezza team. You can have a look at the squads in the thread. You can only keep 20 players. Any player you trade in, must be in your 20 keepers. We’ll let you know the rules and give you a deadline to come up with your decision. In the meantime, you’re welcome to start looking over the lists.
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Love your work.
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One thing I may not get to with the squads…
I’m not sure I’ll be able to bring in the 2024 position from AFL Fantasy.
It’ll depend if I can easily scrape the info off that website and whether I can get the names to easily marry up with the way thebench had players names and populate into my xls sheet accurately.
I may need to leave that up to each individual coach to do.
Will happily take over Dunlop’s Sunbury Seagulls 
Yikes.
Are we having a round for the AFL opening round? Not sure how it could work with only 4 matches. If we didn’t play it buys extra time to fit everything in.
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Not sure yet.
It could help buy us some extra time which is sorely needed.
There’s also how bye averages would work around opening round and how to be able to name bye players.
It may be better off to give Opening Round a miss. Maybe so the score doesn’t get lost, a players opening round score will be used during the bye rounds? I’m not sure how they are doing it in normal fantasy comps. Will have to take a look at it a bit further.
We have @AVanderScreamer taking the last vacant coaching spot which is great.
We’ll be going through a few things over then few days and get back to you all with an update before the weekend is out.
Cheers all.
And welcome to AVanderScreamer.
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Just to give you guys a rundown of the survey results…
2 - current coach for admin?
YSBS
JBaller
Crazy Bomber
AllBlack / The Mad Bomber
Saladin
Depending on the particular task, someone who is active. I am willing to join an Admin group as long as I know what I’m expected to do.
Saladin
Redbull
Stoops
JBaller92
4 - Prior to last season, we were considering AFL Fantasy or SportsDeck before thebench was found. Do you know of any other platforms that can run a comp like ours?
- It is worthwhile having a look at moreira magic. The are working on a draft based platform to make up for the shortfall left by UF. Not sure when it will launch though. https://moreirasmagic.com.au/
- I’ve only used AFL Fantasy and a spreadsheet league
- Nup. AFL Fantasy seems pretty complete
- Not apart from manually on excel
14 - Rules we should consider?
- Draft time trading
- Strongly discourage not fielding full teams - draft pick penalty
- I think flexibility on your bench ie a FB eligible player named at position 1 on the bench should be able to go to the other position if there is another player that can cover . Ie Darcy Cameron is a RF from my team and if Grundy is starting on the the ground for my team but is a late withdrawal Cameron replaces him. However if a Forward also goes down Cameron could replace the forward leaving my R empty. If there is another player on my bench that can cover the forward then Cameron is shuffled to R to avoid my team getting a 0 and potentially the other forward not even being used. I can explain better if required.
- I actually think that a new category for Key Forwards and Key Backs should be introduced with a requirement to field one of each in the 18. But no platform is likely to support such flexibility in lineups. On the player positions/trades/field makeup, we obviously all need to know early enough to rebalance squads.
- I was going to say that nothing sprung to mind, however it would be good to find a way to reward the coaches who have good H&A seasons. Perhaps have everyone only play each other once then use the surplus rounds to let some finals be played over two weekends. Appreciate this is a hack and would be difficult to implement.
- Similar rules around future pick trading as the AFL. Need to keep either a round 1 or round 2.
- Double score for Captain
15 - Rules we should not consider?
- I think you’re setting a good course with getting rules aligned to what the available online platforms use. So avoid any hacks (especially the ones I suggest). Avoid anything that gives advantage to certain time zones
- Not a fan of captains
- Personally I think that an extra two spots on a list to mitigate LTI might have unintended consequences in terms of FA pool depth, with 36 less players available. It might be hard to find replacement players should teams get hit by injuries. I could perhaps get behind one extra list spot, but wouldn’t be against it being in the unlucky file and having to deal with it from your 30 player squad
- Please don’t introduce utility players
- Get rid of position polls
16 - What could the admin team do better?
- I can help with bye averages
- No they do a great job
- I thought the admin team was outstanding last season (my 1st in the league)
- Drink more
- Anything that makes the Admin life simpler. As a note on how long I can see myself staying, I feel I have a certain sunk-cost into the league, could leave at any time but happy to stay and play
- You guys do an awesome job
- It runs well so far, probably just a watch out with new teams entering that they don’t get raided by experienced/persuasive traders
- They already do a heap as volunteers so can’t criticise
- They do a great job. No suggestions for improvement.
Most of the write in questions were more to gauge what we could add after this coming season to try and bring this comp back to the things we love most about the comp we’ve grown accustomed to. But for the short term, we’re trying to get this season run on a platform that can be used ongoing so that we don’t need to make drastic changes from year to year due to a lack of other platform options and then start adding some unique rules to it.
We’re still trying to fine tune the rule changes. The majority look relatively stable and matching the positive responses to the survey.
The items still being thrashed out are the team make up (the 5-7-1-5 lineup) and the list length to compensate for LTIs. As noted from the survey, both these rules will dilute the free agent pool and the team lineups in particular could make it tough to field a full team due to lack of rucks and midfielders to fill the spots. Once players earn an extra position though (as AFL Fantasy usually do after the first month) it should allow enough flexibility for coaches to navigate through the season and field full teams.
Hopefully we can finalise everything by middle of the week or by next weekend.
At the moment, Split_Infinity takes over Dunlops team and AVanderScreamer takes over Wezza’s team.
All things going well, trade period might start as early as next weekend and run to Sunday March 3 after pre-season games have completed.
20 Keepers in that night.
The draft begins Monday morning (on Blitz just incase there are some keeper admin errors).
The draft will go through Opening Round and we’ll have more on that through the week until our first round of games on Thursday March 14.
We’ll aim to finalise all the rules and provide a clarifying whatnot by the middle of this week.
Cheers.
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Love your work and thanks for wrangling us mangy cats into the bag
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Thanks, Blummers.
Signed up.
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I have a few ‘tradeables’
Bailey MacDonald
Jeremy Howe
Jesse Hogan
Laitham Vandermeer
Luke Parker
I am preferably after picks so should be no problem cos most people think draft picks are overrated.
I can’t even think about trading until I know what my player positions look like.
At the moment I have a very unbalanced list.
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Good point. I am looking off last year’s positions. What could go wrong?