Howdy gents.
A few announcements for the 2025 season.
Firstly, one of last season’s coaches will not be returning, so we’re on the look out for another coach. If anyone else intends to leave the competition, please let us know ASAP so we can start recruiting other coaches.
Secondly, just like every year since 2021, at some point, I’m looking to leave this competition and at this point this is likely to be my final season. Obviously, just like every year since 2021, that could change by the end of the season.
If anyone want’s to pick up more administration tasks, please come forward (PM me, Smoten and allback).
For this reason, we are trying to automate as many tasks as possible so the competition can be more sustainable and the admin group can actually spend more time coaching their teams.
Thirdly, it’s still a bit early to confirm all changes as AFL Fantasy is not ‘fully functional’ yet and Keeper Fantasy is yet to allow early access.
Fourthly, the Draft Thread has been created. It still needs some checking though.
Updated rules have been drafted. The changes have been highlighted.
There’s time to change / fine tune these rules so we’d really love these rules to be interrogated a bit more. If the wording is confusing, please let me know. We encourage as much discussion on these rules over the next few weeks. Ideally, I’d like to finalise these rules by the first week of February.
In summary:
- we’re going back to a 6-5-1-6 team setup.
- free agency will be run on AFL Fantasy. There will be a ‘restricted free agent’ system.
- we do want to open up trading a bit more, so have tweaked the trade period rules.
- We’re intending to introduce trading during the draft. AFL Fantasy says it can handle it, but I’m suspect with how it works. So the rules for this are more towards a draft run on Blitz.
In detail:
FF Original DT Rules
Season Begins
- No games played during Opening Round. The scores during this round will be during the Early Bye Rounds.
- The season will begin at Round 1.
Competition Costs
- Entry Fee: $20 per coach ($360 total)
- Admin: $50 for AFL Fantasy
- Premier: $240
- Runner-Up: $70
Key Dates
- Trade Period - Saturday February 15 9am AEST to Sunday March 2 6pm AEST
- Keeper Deadline - Sunday March 2 9pm AEST
- Draft Begins - Monday March 3 9am AEST
- Season begins - Thursday March 13 (Round 1)
- Mid Season Trade Period - Rounds 12 to 16 (the bye rounds)
Keeper Rules
- You can choose any 20 players as ‘keepers’ for the upcoming season once trade period has been completed.
- There are no position quotas that must be met. It is up to the coaches discretion whether they are to go into the draft with positional shortfalls.
Injury List Rules & List Sizes
- You can only hold 30 players on your list. There will be no LTIs, they must be managed within your list.
- Coaches need to be mindful of this to ensure they are naming a full team weekly.
Free Agency Rules
- There are no restrictions with how many changes can be made using the free agent system.
- Free Agents will no longer be collated and processed on Blitz. AFL Fantasy will be utilised.
- Players can be signed at any time (including during the round). 9/3/2025
- Players can be dropped at any time (including during the round) as long as their team hasn’t played. 9/3/2025
- Players dropped will go into a ‘Restricted Free Agent’ system. Coaches have two days to claim the player. If they are not claimed, they will become free agents.
- The Restricted Free Agent team order will be managed by AFL Fantasy set as a reverse ladder order. It is unclear whether this will be a rolling order. 9/3/2025
- In the week of the mid season draft, the players selected will be available as soon as AFL fantasy allows them to be selected. If there is a chance to change their status, they will go into a waiver system, before becoming free agents. This will be confirmed once the competition begins.
Ladder Positions
- It will be as per AFL rules, however, instead of using percentage as a tiebreaker, the ‘points for’ will be used.
Draft Time Limits
- The aim is to run the draft on AFL Fantasy but depending on its capabilities, we may run it on Blitz.
- For the first 5 rounds, the time limit will be 12 hours flat from the time of the last pick.
- From round 6 onwards, the time limit is reduced to 5 hours during the day.
A typical day is considered 8am to 11pm. During a regular day you have 5 hours, but if your pick comes up at 8pm, you have until 11am the next day to take your pick. Obviously, that should rarely be the case as long as you check in three times through your day. - Whenever possible, send someone some contingencies if you’re expecting to be away from Blitz for a long period of time.
Trading during the Trade Period
- Previously, players couldn’t be ‘on traded’. This is no longer the case. This should reduce the need for three team trades.
- Previously, any player traded for during the pre-season, must make your keeper list. This is no longer the case. You are not obligated to keep the player/s you have traded for.
- You will only be able to trade draft picks from the next upcoming draft. This means during the pre-season draft, you can only trade picks from the upcoming draft, it isn’t until the mid-season trade period that you can trade picks from next season’s draft.
- At the completion of the trade period, if you end up trading in surplus draft picks, you get to keep those picks going into the draft.
- At the completion of the trade period, if you end up trading away more picks than you get back, you will not get extra picks at the end of the draft to fill your list to 30.
Trading during the Draft (5/3/2025)
- There will be no trading during the draft
- Teams with excess picks at the end of trade period will lose them.
- At the completion of the draft, every coach should have no more and no less than 30 players on their list. (Updated 4/3/2025)
Draft Rules (5/3/2025)
- A Live Draft will be run on AFL Fantasy.
• • Any early round posted on BomberBlitz prior to the AFL Fantasy Draft being up and running will be honoured, however the intention is to complete the remainder of the draft on AFL Fantasy.
Bye Round Rules
For Rounds 2, 3, 5 and 6
- Opening Round Scores will be utilised regardless of whether they are injured or suspended. As long as they played in the Opening Round, they are fine to be selected and their opening round score will count towards that rounds games.
For Rounds 12, 13, 14 and 15
- A player that is injured or suspended during the bye week can still be selected as long as they played the week before.
- Bye scoring will be a players season average.
Current Bye Round Helpers:
- Split_Infinity
- JBaller
- Windy_Dill
Team Selection Rules
- There will be rolling lockouts every week (just like DT). You are free to adjust your lineup throughout the weekend.
- We will be reverting to a 6 forwards, 5 midfielders, 1 ruckman and 6 defenders team setup with 4 bench players selected per week.
Not Attempting to Field a Full team Rules
Not attempting to field a full team is the following:
- Not fielding 6 forwards, 5 midfielders or 6 defenders in your 18.
- Not naming players selected in their AFL teams as your emergency. Even if they are picked as emergencies in their AFL teams, they should at least make your emergency list. You shouldn’t be taking 0s and having players outside your 22 scoring when they could have been named as emergencies.
- Due to the lack of rucks, this position will be dealt with extremely leniently.
However, if one is available in the FA pool (that is selected in their AFL’s team at the time of FA selection) and you neglect to fill your gap, you are effectively not attempting to field a full team.
A few things of note:
- We do not expect coaches to delist their premium players who are injured. So some discretion will be given for teams with injury riddles.
- If you have bench players that are languishing at lower levels and under performing, we expect these players to be thrown into the FA pool. If they are smashing it, it’s fair enough to hold onto them. There will be some discretion here, but it’ll be up to the coach to put forward the defence that the player is of value and shouldn’t be included in the FA pool.
- Some leniency will be provided during the elongated rounds when the last game/s of the round teams do not come out until very late in the round.
Example: Player X plays on Sunday but Monday games are yet to be released. You have Players A, B & C expecting to be selected for Monday’s game but want Player X’s score in the midfield. Players A, B & C are expected to play in the forward line, but due to the rolling lockout, you may play this position short on the field if one of them isn’t selected.
How are we alerted?
The admin group don’t have time to scan every team, every week and try to decipher whether coaches are not attempting to field a full team. So we need coaches to call it out and alert us.
- it’s up to all coaches to look at their opposition (or other teams if you like) that week and alert the admin team of any behaviour that looks like their opposition is not attempting to field a full team. Please sent a PM to @You_Shall_Be_Smoten, @Allblack and @Blummers32.
What happens next:
- We deliberate as an admin group and consider whether a warning should be required.
- If we believe a warning is required, we will PM the coach separately and advise of the warning.
- The coach will have the opportunity to ‘explain themselves’.
What are the penalties?
- Each coach will have 2 warnings without any further punishment.
- Once a coach reaches their third warning, their earliest draft pick will drop 5 spots.
- For every warning after that, your earliest draft pick will drop a further 5 spots.
- If the coach has already traded away their first round draft pick prior to their third warning, an alternative punishment will be considered.
One thing of note:
- Warnings are reset every year, so every coach start at 0 from the first week of games.
- We may choose to bypass the warnings in the last two rounds of the season.
Using empty spots on the field as bench loopholes
- AFL Fantasy does not replace empty spots on the field with bench scores. We encourage the use of blank spots as loopholes to gamble on a bench players scores, so admin will override adjust the scores accordingly to replace the bench score with a blank spot on the field.