Dream Team

Dream Team is the name of a fantasy competition that is run by the AFL that allows you to pick a team based on imaginary money you have, and if the players in your team get the most points then you win autographed prizes for the weekly winner and a car for the yearly winner. In 2008 it was sponsored by Aurion V6, who donated the car. It competes with Super Coach, which is run by Herald Sun as the dominant fantasy competition. Foxtel also runs a fantasy competition, although the Foxtel competition is not popular.

You begin with $8,000,000 (8 million dollars). Each player costs between $78,000 and $400,000 depending on how good they are (as determined by how many points they have earned). Players who have never played before are worth $78,000. You have to pick 30 players, an average of just under $300,000 each. Of the 30, only 22 can play in a given week. Therefore, you could get 22 expensive players and 8 cheap players, or mix them around somewhat. No matter how you do it, you cannot ever get the 22 best players. You always have to pick at least one weak player.

On top of this, there is a problem in that a player might not play. If they are a late withdrawal, you get 0 points for them. You can then use emergencies, a maximum of 3, 1 in each of the 4 positions (back, centre, forward or ruck). 1 of the positions needs to be bare (most people leave the ruck bare). If 2 people from a position withdraw (e.g. 2 midfielders) then you are guaranteed to miss 1 of them, no matter what. It is also pointless to name 2 reserves in the same position, as only 1 of them will count - the lowest scoring one.

Scoring is based on how many kicks they get, how many handballs, how many tackles, free kicks for, free kicks against, goals, behinds, and various other factors. They haven't released the formula publicly though.

Scoring is generally lower than the scoring for Super Coach, although in some circumstances a player can get more Dream Team points than Super Coach points. This seems to be the case if they are a ruck with lots of hit outs, or a full forward who kicks lots of goals but otherwise has a bad day. Dream Team doesn't seem to penalise as much as Super Coach does when a player does something awful. Behinds are good for Dream Team, but bad for Super Coach.

Throughout the year you can make 20 trades, 2 per week, for 22 rounds. Thus if you make 2 per week for the first 10 rounds, you can't make any more for the last 12 rounds.

Dream Team is superior to Super Coach in that it gives live updates while a match is in progress. It is inferior in most other ways.

Players go up in value as the year progresses. Occasionally they go down in value too. You can sometimes buy a player for $80,000 then sell them for $200,000. Of course, whoever you are buying may have been worth $80,000 and gone up to $200,000 too.

The key is to buy rookies as they are new, before they have gone up in value, then sell them just as they start to do badly, are dropped, suspended, or injured.

New players have 1 week free. If they score well in their first week, it might be a good idea to buy them, before they go up in value the 2nd week. For example Dalziell got 130 points in the first week but was still $78,000. After his 2nd week where he scored 120 points, he was then worth $180,000 and after his 3rd week was worth $230,000, as much as a good long term player, in spite of only having played 3 weeks. However, if you had got him after his 1st week, you have made $152,000. But you might want to keep him as he is scoring 100 points per round.

The aim is to get 22 players that each score close to 100 points each. If you can do that, then you are close to the weekly winner each week. The weekly winner is usually around 2,500 points or so. The annual winner is around about 2,200 points per week average, or 100 points each player.

You also get to choose a captain as well as a vice captain. The vice captain is meaningless unless the captain is injured, in which case the vice captain gets the double points.

Round 1 you can join a league if you like, up to 3 leagues maximum. Round 2 you get put into a league with 16 players in it, all of whom have scored around about the same as you did. Small leagues are combined to form 16 player leagues. From rounds 2-3 you don't play against anyone. From round 4-18 you play head to head against all 15 others in your league. Then after that you play finals from round 19-22, with 4 rounds. Even if you don't make the top 8, you still play finals. This works in the same way as the actual season.

In the actual finals, you can enter a new contest, dream team finals, where you pick from players who are in the finals. In this case there is no salary cap or trade limits - you just pick your favourite 22 players. Also there are no reserves. The limitation is that of the 8 teams you can only pick 3 players per team, thus you are picking the top 3 from each team (22 players in 8 teams with 3 max per team).