It is official, Daily Fantasy Sports have landed in Australia and this weekend we will finally get to fully experience DFS – AFL!
Moneyball dabbled in AFL last year but now that the user-base has grown expect some big pools and juicy contests in 2016
Australian Rules Football really should become one of the best daily fantasy sports to play on the planet due to the large amount of variance and the fact just about any player can have a massive game at any given stage.
Anyone from the back pocket to the forward flanker can have 30 possessions and score 100 points for your team.
Also, because it is a physical game with plenty of one-on-one contests player match-ups should prove to be a big factor in getting your team right.
Does your favourite full forward’s value go up or down if he has to play against Alex Rance this weekend?
AFL is not like Gridiron where only a handful of players can hit the scoreboard or accumulate points, or Cricket where it’s highly unlikely a batsman below number seven in the batting order can make many runs. Even the highly popular Basketball has it’s limitations as the large sample sizes make projections very accurate and stars almost always find a way to ‘get their shots’ each night.
AFL is variance central, in one game or multiple game slates!
The larger game slates such as Super Saturday’s covering four or five games are going to be off the charts!
Not to mention the potential for a weekend long contests…
36 players on the field at any given time across potentially what could be nine different games in a contest is sure to throw the cat amongst the pigeons as Bill Lawry would say.
How many players fill out my Moneyball AFL DFS roster?
Just nine players!
- Two x Forwards
- Two x Defenders
- Four x Midfielders
- One x Ruckman
First impressions; there are, by definition essentially 12 midfield players on the field at any given time for a team and with Moneyball you have to play five of them (Ruck+Mids). Whereas, by definition there are still 12 defenders and 12 forwards but we only need to select two players at either position. Crazy!
That means there is going to be games where all the value is at the forward or defender positions and we’ll be forced to leave out some studs. The midfield on the other hand looks to be where cash or double-up games will be won or lost. It’s a high point scoring zone as well so picking your ‘locks’ each game in this zone will become critical and we should see lots of midfield players with large percentages of ownership.
Perhaps more of an edge for tournament style games will come from picking your defenders, forwards or even via the ruck position!
Scoring system
Goal 6 pts
Behind 1 pt
Kick 3 pts
Handball 2 pts
Mark 4 pts
Tackle 4 pts
Clanger Handball-3 pts
Clanger Kick-3 pts
Free Kicks For 3 pts
Free Kicks Against -3 pts
Hitout 1 pt
What to make of the above? Well for you AFL Dreamteam players out there, the scoring is vastly different.
Accounting for clangers both by foot and hand add a new dimension and marks are worth four points at Moneyball not the usual three points you may have grown accustomed to. Winning a Free Kick is also worth a whopping three points instead of the one on AFL Dreamteam. Even more reason to pick the cereal head duckers and knee droppers – Joel Selwood and Andrew Swallow I’m looking at you!
Examples of the average player scoring from last season
- MID: Luke Hodge 111.5 ppg
- FWD: Jack Gunston 97.2 ppg
- DEF: Josh Gibson 91.7 ppg
- RUCK: Ben McEvoy 77.5 ppg
Types of contest that Moneyball will run?
So far we’ve seen AFL double-ups, head-to-heads, leagues and competitions. What’s interesting to note is thus far they have not put up any contests covering multiple amounts of games. This method become very popular with the NFL that has the same format of games per round running across multiple days.
