Having fallen out of the habit of blog writing for the past fortnight or so, I thought it would be good to quickly spruik just how little I really know about football.
This year I've signed up to three seperate fantasy competitions, and have drafted a variety of different players. Watching matches will be quite the conflicting experience this year. While my absolute first allegience will always - always- go to the Cowboys, I will now be cheering or bemoaning each try as I try to calculate whether that particular try helps or hinders my side.
My team in every fantasy competition goes by the name of the Dropkicks, partly in tribute to the Irish-American punk rock band that shares half the name - click here for a great live version of what is essentially my fantasy teams' victory song - but also because the name "Dropkick" magnificently sums up the talent levels of at least half of the players in my teams. "They haven't an arm, they haven't a leg, they're an eyeless Irish chickenless egg.....Aiden Sezer, we hardly knew ye."
The first competition, and the one I have persisted with most, is NRL Supercoach. I won't bore you with the ins-and-outs of the competition as I reckon most of my potential readers are already participating. I'm lucky enough to be in the full quota of five competitions, including one run by an old teaching colleage from western Queensland, and one from the boys from This Week In League (@twileague).
The Dropkicks squad as currently assembled for this competition is:
Darius Boyd, Akulia Uate, Jack Reed, Kalifa Fai Fai Loa, Kane Linnett, Johnathan Thurston, Shaun Johnson, Jason Taumalolo, Corey Parker, Shaun Fensom, Cameron Smith, Sam Rapira, Darcy Lussick, Ben Hunt, J.McKean, Sam Hoare, Paul Gallen, Dallas Johnson, R.Simpkins, Michael Picker, J.Hunt, J.Gavet, S.Suaiuma, J.Taufua, Marmin Barba.
As you can tell, I have neither the time nor the patience to learn many of the first names of players in this squad. They are the true Dropkicks, the bottom feeders of fantasy that exist only so that I can cram in the Gallens and Fensoms of the world.
The second competition is run through Fox Sports and organised by the formidable @sonyabeauchamp. This is how the Dropkicks stack up:
Dan Hunt, Aiden Tolman, Kurt Baptiste, Jason Taumalolo, Corey Parker, Paul Gellen, Aidan Sezer, Johnathan Thurston, Dean Whare, Will Chambers, Billy Slater, Marmin Barba, Nathan Merritt, Sam Lousi, Tariq Sims, Siuatonga Likiliki, Kalifa Fai Fai Loa, Darcy Lussick, Cameron Smith, Shaun Fensom, Michael Picker, Kyle Stanley, Justin O'Neill
I really like the look of this squad as it contains nearly all of the "Fantasy Immortals", namely Smith, Gallen, Parker, Tolman and Fensom, as well as potentially huge try scorers in Slater, Fai Fai Loa and Merritt. However, because this particular competition is an accumulative points competition, rather than a head-to-head competition, it will probably be the least important to me. Sorry Sony.
The third competition, and the one that I'm most excited about, is run by an old school friend called @bona1978, who has put a bunch of us into a competition called NRLCEO. The premise of this competition is that each NRL player can only be owned once - as opposed to the above two competitions, of which every serious coach will each have a Gallen and Parker clone.
Scoring is done purely on what's achieved on the field - a try is worth four points, only pre-nominated kickers can earn kicking points (so there's little sense in putting Soward, Thurston, Burt and Parker in the same team). Forwards can score a "forward try" with exceptional statistical performances - a stack of hitups and tackles, for example. In addition, strict limits apply on the number of positions you can select - so a squad is balanced and doesn't contain 14 hookers and 11 centres.
There are only eight of us in this competition - survivors of a hectic NFL Fantasy competition that I organised and whimsically called the Fruit and Salad Bowl. In that tradition, this competition is called the Fruit and Salad NRL, and we convened for a live draft about a month ago. Hilariously (now, but not at the time!) a slew of server problems meant that not many of us were able to pick the players we wanted, and were given erronous draft choices instead. For example, I tried to draft Cameron Smith first, but got Feliti Mateo instead.
Here is the premiers-elect of the Fruit Salad NRL competition:
Gerard Beale, Josh Hoffman, Josh Morris, Scott Bolton, Beau Henry, Matt Keating, Cory Paterson, Gavin Cooper, Kevin Kingston, Kane Linnett, Mitchell Pearce, Anthony Watmough, Brent Kite, Jason King, Aiden Tolman, Anthony Quinn, Billy Slater, Dane Nielsen, Gareth Widdop, Justin O'Neill, Kevin Proctor, James Maloney, Kalifa Fai Fai Loa, Jack Reed, Ryan Hoffman.
As you can see, this squad is very heavy on Storm, Broncos and Cowboys players. A vote of confidence in their prospects this season, or perhaps just an indication of my preferences with the auto-select function on draft night.
I'm excited to see the return of the NRL for this season - and if I get another spare moment this night I'll try to write a comprehensive Cowboys preview that will probably just turn out to be uneducated drivel. I'm particuarly excited though that the fantasy season returns.
This is one of the best times of the year to be an NRL fan, right up there with September and October (provided one's team is participating, of course).
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