Draft date
I think we’ve landed on Saturday 15 February, at midday (SA time). This seems to work for almost everyone – and gives Max a chance to actively participate. The only potential issue is Nathan, but he’s going to see if he can shift some commitments.
I’m sorry it hasn’t been smooth going this year, and I thank everyone for being flexible.
Platform
There was a bit of support for giving the new Keeper platform a whirl, so that’s what we’re going with.
I included invite codes for everyone in my email earlier this month. Let me know if you have any trouble getting in.
I’m optimistic this is going to be a solid choice. The platform has impressive functionality – I was able to put through the trades done over the weekend in record time.
The platform will also track draft picks for us, and allow us to trade draft picks within the platform itself. This should make it much easier to keep track of that.
It also appears to automatically give the option of applying opening round scores in subsequent early season byes – so may not have to do that manually this season.
Now that we’ve decided on Keeper, there are a few other things we as a league need to settle on. More on that further down the page…
What’s changing, and what isn’t
Utility Position: widespread support for the return of the utility. So that’s locked in for season 2025.
Switching from percentage to points scored as a ladder tiebreaker: most responses were pro this move, so we’ll implement this.
Gentleman’s agreement regarding ‘no red dots on field while there are green dots on the bench’: again, widespread support here.
FAAB: some support, but most coaches happy with the current waiver system. We will keep it as it is. There is important nuance to be aware of though, which I cover below.
Injured reserve: had some strong support, and some strong ‘no thanks’ responses here. I think given that, we won’t implement this for 2025. This might be one folks want to discuss ahead of 2026. If I could summarise the ‘no case’, I think the view was we have large enough lists to accommodate injuries, while some suggested it may reduce trades (e.g. make it easier to justify hanging onto someone till they come back)
New things we need to decide with the Keeper platform
Player Positions – AFL standard, or Keeper?
Keeper offers a few options here. We can:
- Align with the AFL fantasy positions. Start the season with the exact same positions AFL Fantasy has. DPPs will occur in season every 6 weeks, as they do in AFL Fantasy & SuperCoach.
- Use Keeper’s positions. This is more in keeping with Ultimate Footy back in the day. They’ll use the same starting positions as AFL Fantasy as a baseline, but add a few DPPs on top – including 12 extras to start the season (list here). They’ll also assess new DPPs every 3 weeks, instead of every 6. Basically, if we pick this option, we’ll likely end the season with more DPPs than we would otherwise.
Keeper are also offering the option of triple positions for players. So this covers players who start the season with 2 positions already, but would technically gain a third if that functionality existed. An example of this last year would be Sam Flanders. He started with MID/FWD status, but played much of the year in defence. With triple positions enabled, he could theoretically have gotten DEF/MID/FWD status last season.
Keen to hear from coaches on this – AFL fantasy positions, or Keeper positions? And should we enable triple positions or not? (to be clear, no guarantee anybody gets it – nobody will start with it)
Waiver technicalities
We’ve already opted to stick with waivers instead of FAAB. But it seems waivers on Keeper will work slightly differently regardless.
Keeper describes their waiver option as a “rolling priority list”. This is more in keeping with how it typically works in US fantasy sports. In this system, the waiver priority order doesn’t reset after every weekend – it only changes when a coach successfully uses their waiver.
So Te Puke Pukekos will have the number 1 waiver priority heading into the season (The Soldiers 2nd, and so on). They can choose to hold this until they want to spend it – as they’ll guarantee they’ll get whoever they spend it on. Once you successfully use your waiver priority, you go to the bottom of the list, and everyone else climbs up a spot.
To be clear, this only applies to ‘restricted free agents’ – that is, waiver claims made in the 24 hours after a round ends, or the 2 days after someone is dropped. Outside of these windows, the free agent pool doesn’t “cost” anything to use.
In truth I don’t think this is a big deal – I just want to make sure everybody understands the nuance heading into the season. It should still ensure the worst teams from last season get a leg up in the early part of the season (even if they get off to a hot start). BUT, if this strikes folks as concerning, I could reach out to the developer to see if it’d be possible to get a “weekly reset, based on ladder order” option incorporated into the game.
(in the process of writing this, I began to doubt whether AFL Fantasy did in fact reset after each round, and if this is just a case of me not having paid enough attention. Either way, the above is how it works in Keeper!)