Each fantasy player needs to build and manage their own unique player squad of a maximum 30 players throughout the season. Every AFL player placement in a squad in unique. Ie. Once signed to a squad, no other fantasy player can use that player until released back into the player pool.
Each round (week), a run-on team of 22 players is selected by each fantasy player, along with a substitution order for those squads members not selected.
You can sign as many players in any position as you desire to your squad. However, keep in mind that your team should cover all positions in order to select a full run-on team each round.
Player Draft
Prior to the start of the season, a player draft takes place to allow all fantasy players to build their initial 30-man squad.
The ‘Fantasy Teams’ -> ‘Available Players’ page is utilised for all selections during the draft event.
The Player Draft can be conducted one of two ways:
Fast Draft
This method will see all player squads filled within around 45-60 minutes. All fantasy players need to be online at the same time to participate in the event. Those that miss the event can still pick their team prior to round 1 … but don’t expect many top players to be available!
All at once, fantasy players can sign one player at a time to their individual squads. To make it fair to all players, after each signing, you are locked from making your next signing for a period of time (configurable). By default, this is 60 seconds. A countdown timer is shown on page, and the Sign Player buttons enable/disable automatically during this time (no need to refresh the page in your browser).
As players are signed off the available list, notifications are displayed, and the squad signed name shown on screen in real time (this can be filtered out if desired). Keep selecting players until your squad is full.
Sequential Draft (Long)
This method takes significantly longer, but also ensures each player can take a more considered approach during player selection. Allow up to a week for comps with the maximum players involved.
Players are randomly placed in a structured selection order, that snakes back and forth in turn. eg. if there are 6 players in your comp, then the first 2 picks for each squad will occur in this order 1,2,3,4,5,6,6,5,4,3,2,1. This pattern continues until all squads are full.
Each player goes ‘on the clock’ when their turn arrives, and a maximum time window for each draft pick can be set by the competition manager (default is 4 hours). As soon as a selection is made, the next player is called up for their next pick. Players do NOT have to be online togther throughout this process, only when their selections are due.
If a selection is not made within the time window, the system can be configured to either automatically select the best available player still remaining (based on prior season results), or the pick is held over and the draft moves forward. The held over pick can be then taken at any time by that player in order to catch up to the total picks of everyone else.
Another tool offered to help speed up this style of draft is the ‘Queue Pick‘ option. Each fantasy manager can queue up their favourite players in order of desired selection and enable this feature to automatically take the highest available player in their queue list at the start of their next pick turn.
The final feature to note is the draft opening hours. We all need to sleep right? The comp manager can set a daily range of hours where the draft is active. eg 8am -10pm. Outside of these hours, the clock is effectively paused. New draft picks can still take place, and the draft can move forward, but no player will be forced into a selection or be adversely affected.
My Squad
The maximum 25 players that make up your squad can be viewed on the Fantasy Teams -> My Squad page.
Here you can see a tabulated view of your player names, position(s) and their availability (Injured, Suspended, Available). The availability feature does NOT include representative selection.
Players can be released from your squad by clicking the ‘Release’ button. Once released, they are available for any other fantasy player to sign.
You will need to release 1 or more players in order to free up slots in your squad to sign new players throughout the season.
After the completion of the draft, all Fantasy Players squads can be viewed to help you better understand your head to head opposition!
Next -> Weekly Gameplay
