Creating a Competition

TheBench™ Fantasy Footy allows you to create and run your own private Fantasy Footy Competition or, for selected Codes, to join an existing Public Competition, following the Australian Football League Home and Away Premiership season.

You can choose from either a Draft Style Competition or a Salary Cap Competition.

In your private competition, you, your mates and/or work colleagues each create a Club for which you/they are the Coach. Each Coach has a Squad of AFL Players which are selected at the start of the season.

For each Round of the AFL season, each Coach will select a Team, from your Squad, to compete against a competing Club. Your Team will score points based on the real-life performance of the Players you have selected in your Team. If your Team scores more points than the Team of the Club you are competing against, you will win the Game.

Anyone can create their own private competition from the Register Competition page.

Registering:

To register with TheBench™ there is a few options you can choose from (here) and will depend on Seasonal availability per Code:

1. Create a Private Draft Style Competition: This is the classic model from TheBench, you create your own private Fantasy Footy Competition, competing just amoungst you and your mates/colleagues. Before the AFL Season begins, you will run a player draft when each Coach picks their Players, one at a time.
2. Create a Private Salary Cap Competition: This is new for 2008. Create a private Competition for you and your mates using a Salary Cap constraint to select a Squad of players. In a Salary Cap Competition, each coach will also compete for the overall Championship for TheBench, ie. against all other Coaches in other Competitions.
3. Join an Existing Public Salary Cap Competition: If you can’t get enough mates together to run your own Competition, you can just join an existing public Competition.

Once you have selected your prefered registration option, you simply fill out one form and you are away.

If you create a Competition, you will default to the Competition Manager and so will have extra rights to the site that other Coaches won’t. You can change who has Competition Manager access as needed.

If you are creating a Competition you need to specify the details of your Competition and that of the first Coach/Club (ie. your Club). If you are joining an existing Public Competition you obviously just specify the Coach/Club details.

If you have created a Draft Competition you will have a little more control over the settings of your Competition including:

• The maximum number of Player delistings
• The Last Trade Round
• Squad Size

Once registered, you can login to the site and start recruiting/adding coaches.

Recruiting Coaches:

You can recruit coaches in two ways.

• As the Competition Manager, from the Competition Home page you can simply add a new club by clicking the ‘add club’ link. This will open a new window for you to enter the details of the new coach and their club.
• Alternatively you can invite coaches to register themselves. By entering the potential coaches email address in the ‘Invite’ box on the home page, and clicking ‘invite’, an email will be sent with a link to the coach to register their club with your competition.

As you add new clubs or as coaches register themselves with your competition, the ladder table will fill and a Game Fixture will be generated.

The optimum number of clubs in a competition is around 10 to 12. The site will manage more clubs than this though the number of quality players a coach can choose from for their squad begins to be limited. An even number of clubs also recommended to avoid having a bye. If you do not have an even number of clubs, we will automatically add a Computer Coach (see below).

When you have all your clubs registered, you can run a player draft so each coach can select their squad for the season.

Computer Coach:

If you do not have an even number of clubs registered in your competition, when you start your draft, a computer coach will be automatically added to your Competition. This will avoid the need for a bye which may make for an uneven and unfair Competition. The computer coach will automatically pick players in your on-line draft and will automatically pick a team each week. If you are using a manual draft, the Competition Manager will need to manage the Computer Coach’s player selections.