The Fantasy King: Round 14
By Mink Adams
In any normal fantasy competition, fourteen weeks in we'd all be right in the thick of it, agonising over every trade, checking up on projections and generally boring anyone within a Ricky Stuart cutout pass with details of how many points we would have scored if only we started the back up half, switched captains from Fensom to Smith and ignored everything Tom Sangster said on Wednesday.
Instead, for fantasy players the middle third of the season brings about an unsatisfying ennui as the Origin period robs us of the best fantasy talent and those incessant byes take off with the rest. There hasn't been a full round of football since Round 9 and there won't be another one until Round 19. In fantasy terms, this is an unacceptable state of affairs.
Given that the Phil Gould Origin model I mentioned a few weeks ago will in all likelihood never eventuate, I offer a few ideas for improving the structure of the fantasy competition. Bear in mind that these are not carefully thought out, scientifically tested proposals but rather the half-cocked ravings of a fantasy nut who is mad as hell and not going to take it anymore. I accept that you could probably pull apart these ideas like Jamal Idris with a bucket of KFC, but goddammit, somebody's got to do some thinking here.
TEMPORARY TRADES
How it Works
For every player in your squad not playing on the weekend due to a bye, you may bring in a player of equal or lesser value as a replacement. This would be a one week deal with all temporary trades reversed at the completion of the round- if a temp player carved up and you wanted to make the trade permanent, you would have to sacrifice a trade as per usual.
Every week, every fantasy player would have the chance to field a full 17, and those frustrations we deal with every year would be a thing of the past. Easy, solved. Oh, wait…
Why it won't work
Any initiative which rewards mediocrity by extension punishes skill, and this is the central issue with such a proposal. It is the ability to navigate the bye period which separates the men from the boys in fantasy, with the top tier of players astute enough to be able to field a full or near full team even on five game weekends. To be the best out of a hundred and twenty thousand odd requires a degree of forward thinking and tactical acumen that us mere mortals can only dream of. And long should it remain so.
Would be nice though.
ORIGIN POINTS COUNT
How it works
As simple as it sounds. The lockout would be extended from Tuesday to Thursday and any Origin players in your squad would have their stats counted and points tallied for that week's total score. No longer would we miss out on paydays from Paul Gallen, whose efforts in Game Two last year surely would have garnered about a thousand points. What a freak.
Why it won't
A simple question of logistics. I don't buy the argument that it's a different competition: 50 tackles is 50 tackles, 2 tries is 2 tries. However it raises a number of complications that will ultimately make it untenable. For example, Manly have the bye this weekend. This means that a Daly Cherry-Evans owner will get zero points. It isn't really fair then, to have points for Watmough and the Stewart brothers counted? And then there's the Corey Parker situation- initially selected to play, he was ruled out of the Broncos game after a late call up to Queensland. Astute players would have made a switch and substituted him out of their squads, while less astute players would have been oblivious and started him as captain- is it fair that they reap the benefits? Of course not. And then there is the fact that the turnaround from lockout to lockout would be less than 48 hours. Unfeasible.
In short, too many grey areas.
BIGGER CAP, BIGGER SQUAD
With $5m and 25 players, the Supercoach model provides a limited scope for picking a team that can adequately cover byes and Origin unavailability. Raising cap and squad size seems an obvious solution.
How it works
Say for example, you had $8m and a 35 man squad. If you couldn't successfully negotiate the Origin period with that allocation you're in the wrong game. Of course, to keep it a challenge, some rule amendments would need to be made. For example, a stringent bench set up might need to be enforced- two second rowers, prop and utility for example. Hookers would need to be separated from front rowers (as the Dream Team set up already does) and dual position players would probably need to be made scarcer. Such concessions would ensure that winning the competition would still require skill and strategy rather than dumb luck.
Why it won't work
No reason at all. Let's get it done.
