The first in a series of game overviews to give you the ins and outs of the available games in place for this season’s Premiership. If any new games pop up, please let us know at fantasyrugbygeek@gmail.com or @frugbygeek on Twitter.
First under the microscope is the hotly anticipated and glorious return of the one and only Fantasy Rugby Draft, back this season for Premiership Rugby after a 1 year hiatus.
THE PREMISE
This week saw the incredible news that Fantasy Rugby Draft will be returning in 2022 for Premiership Rugby. It has been an extremely challenging time for the team at FRD. Rising operating costs (particularly with regards the costs of aquiring the key player data from the stats provider) and technical challenges of hosting such a popular and engaging game have led to the team thinking long and hard about the future of the game. It also raises into view the commercial challenges that independent Fantasy Rugby games providers face in bringing Fantasy Rugby to us, the fans. The great news is that it is back, albeit behind a tournament-by-tournament subscription, which is a decision reluctantly made by the FRD management team, but an essential one to keep the game alive.
For those of you that didn’t play FRD 6N or SRP, 2022 had been a challenging year with costly overheads making it extremely challenging to keep delivering the platform that we ourselves love to use.
— Fantasy Rugby Draft 🏉 (@FantasyRugDraft) August 25, 2022
We moved to a pay-to-play service with Standard and Manager Pro https://t.co/AYymaAbpzS
For those new to it, Fantasy Rugby Draft is a draft style Fantasy Rugby league. Fantasy Draft rugby is quite different to traditional salary cap style fantasy rugby as you know it. The key aspects of it are:
- You are competing in a private league of 10, not against the rest of the world
- You draft your squad over 17 rounds
- Unlike in salary cap style games, there is only one player per league (i.e. only one team can have Marcus Smith)
- Each team’s front row is available as one “player”
- You can change your squad via trades, the waiver wire and free agents
- Each week you go head to head vs another team in your league, the winner of this matchup picks up the win in the league table, the top 2 in each league faces off in a set of knock-out play-off phases
But the best part of the experience, and you’ll know this if you’ve played before, is drafting. One-by-one in order (as a result of a random draw), the managers pick the players that make up their team. In order to keep things fair, at the end of each round the order of picks is reversed (so if you picked the first player in Round 1, then you’ll get last pick in Round 2). The draft usually goes on for a couple of hours and is always a great laugh.
In addition, there are now several commissioner customisations possible including being able to customise the points scoring process and the make up of scoring players in your league, or even switching to the legendary Fox scoring.
I’ve played it for a number of years; it’s a brilliant game and well worth you pulling together with your mates to put a league out. If you are looking for a league to join, I’d highly recommend you joining the Fantasy Rugby Draft Hall of Fame facebook group, as there are often people looking for leagues there. If you want to learn more about how to play, then check this out…
THE KEY POINTS
- Squad Size: 17 OR 21
- Team size: 15 (The Default option -> 3 x Outside Backs, 2 x Midfielders, 1 x Fly-half, 1 x Scrum-half, 3 x Loose Forward, 2 x Lock, 2 x Prop & 1 x Hooker) OR 11 (3 x Outside Backs, 2 x Midfielders, 1 x Fly-half, 1 x Scrum-half, 2 x Loose Forward, 1 x Lock & 1 x Front Row)
- Double scoring captain?: No
- Designated Kicker?: No, you can have unlimited kickers
- Transfers: Unlimited transfers (but only if the players you want are free agents or you have agreed a trade)
- Max players from one club: Unlimited
- Subscription cost: Premiership Season Pass (Subscription only) – NZD 9.95 (Approx GBP 5.00 or ZAR 100.00) OR Premiership Season Pass (Manager Pro & Subscription) – NZD 25.00 (Approx GBP 12.00 or ZAR 250.00)
THE EDGE
Kickers not categorised as fly-halves
Often fantasy games force you to select one kicker to gain points from conversions, penalties, drop goals etc. Not here, so if you can find kickers who play outside of the fly-half position (examples in the past include Billy Twelvetrees and Jimmy Gopperth) then they are well worth picking up, as they are guaranteed points.
Front row bonus
Some players categorised as front rowers sometimes will end up playing in the back row. An example here in the past was Gabriel Oghre and Alfie Barbeary at Wasps. If you can find a front row with utility forwards then it will provide your team with an extra player.
Bye weeks
For a second season we have byes to deal with. While Super Rugby fantasy rugby players are well used to bye weeks, this is still a new experience for Premiership managers.
So when are the bye weeks occuring? Here’s a summary…
A point to be considerate of are the teams with byes during the FRD Play-offs & Finals (assuming the play-offs are the last weeks of the regular season), these are Bath (R24), Leicester (R25) and Exeter (R26). Leicester and Exeter in R25 and 26 could certainly cause some headaches for some of the top managers.
Ultimately, with 13 teams in the league and only 1 team on a bye each week, it should all be quite manageable; however, just avoid putting all your eggs in one basket.
Waiver wire
Keep a close eye on the waiver wire throughout the season. There are always absolute bargains that can appear here (including new signings that are quietly slipped into the game without fanfare). Make sure you check out the upcoming matches for the weekend at the start of the week and scour the waiver wire for potential signings with a good fixture at the weekend. The pool of free agents tends to get fiercely competitive just after lineups are announced when Fantasy Rugby Draft managers swamp the site to see who in their team is playing and if there are gaps, then the pool of free agents gets ravaged as managers look to pick up the best possible starters from the remaining players.
Out of position players
Players who are categorised in certain positions, but mostly play in others can be great value. Outside backs who generally have a high probability of scoring tries, beating players, breaking the line and carrying for metres are traditionally the highest scorers, so if you can find an Outside Back categorised as a Midfielder, then load up! Likewise this works well if you can find a Loose Forward categorised as a lock.
Friday Midday Madness
If you are at work on Friday you might want to schedule your lunch break on the dot of midday UK Time, this is when the weekend lineups are announced and when Fantasy Rugby Draft managers swamp the site to see who in their team is playing and if there are gaps, then the pool of free agents gets ravaged as managers look to pick up the best possible starters from the remaining players. Get this right and it will pay off big time. Keep an eye on the team announcements on the Fantasy Rugby Geek Premiership Twitter List to catch the team announcements as they come in.
In other Fantasy Rugby Draft news…
With Draft season fully underway, don’t miss our summary coming soon of this year’s Sleepers and Busts to help you to select an unstoppable team for this unique and strange season. Also, for even more tips to give you the edge, make sure check out our interview with some previous top Fantasy Rugby Draft players, including Bryn Williams and Roy Robertson.
FRG Partners
Check out our selected partners at Canterbury and LooseHeadz for all your stash needs…
Buy me a Coffee!
If you’ve been enjoying the FRG tips over the years, please consider supporting the blog and donating a coffee, all donators will receive a name drop on the next weekly tips, and your donations will help with the running of the blog (and keeping me fuelled to do so!) >>> https://www.buymeacoffee.com/FRugbyGeek
Premiership Rugby Injury News
Gaining reliable Injury news for the Premiership is extremely difficult, and while we don’t have a database of the latest injuries at Fantasy Rugby Geek, we would highly recommend The Rugby Magazine’s injuries page which remains the most exhaustive source of Premiership injury news that can be found. Details of this and many other useful Fantasy Rugby resources can be found at our Resources page.
Looking for more Fantasy Rugby insight and Resources?
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