Gentlemen, at some point we need to agree on what the fixture is going to look like for this year. Key constraints: ORFFU: 17 Regular Rounds 3 (ideally) Rounds of Finals Not playing during multi-bye AFL rounds Need a mid-season period AFL: Organised by a bunch of halfwits The joke that is opening round (8 teams on the Bye, so we're not using that round at all) 16 rounds of Full league 1, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24 2 rounds of 2 Teams on the Bye 4, 13 (affects StK, GWS, Rich, GWS - so a double whammy for anyone with Giants players) 6 rounds of 4 or more teams on the Bye 2, 3, 12, 14, 15, 16 Its likely our mid-season period will cover rounds 14, 15, and 16 this season, which gives us 8 unaffected weeks to end the season. That's the easy bit. Being that we need 17 weeks to complete a regular season, and everyone loves finals, so we'll have at least one of those, the question then becomes: how many rounds of ORFFU do we play, and how many of the bye-influenced rounds do we need to manage our way through. Play only 17 weeks, one game against every team, and Premier is the team at the top of the ladder (so we'll play through AFL R4, and have a MS-period of R12-16). Play 18 weeks, with a grand final between the top two teams at the end of the season, so we'll play the 16 unaffected rounds plus the two rounds (4 & 13) with only two teams on the bye each (MS-period of R14-16). Play 20 weeks, so that we can keep our three weeks of finals, with a MS-period of R14-16, no action for OR and R12, and we'll have to include rounds 2 and 3 with four teams on the bye each of these weeks (affects Bris, Coll, Carl, Gee for round 2 and Suns, Dogs, Hawks, Swans for round 3). If, and only if, the TS site can manage a "best of" scenario, then we can probably find a way to take the best score for each player across multiple weeks (so some players will get 2 bites at the cherry, while others will have a bye and only one bite). As with point 4, and we may be able to shorten the MS-period and take advantage of lots of other bye rounds (including maybe OR) and thus even up the players on the bye. Any other potential solutions that anyone can come up with? So, what is everyone's thoughts, please?
My preference (and I understand this involves more work), would be for option 3, but for match up's for those 2 rounds to be determined based on how many 'bye' players a team has. Rank teams from least impacted to most impacted, and create nearby match up's.
We could do option 3 and reduce team sizes for the affected bye weeks. Maybe only 11 on the field with no minimum requirements on any line. That way teams could select their best 11 for the match in any of the 15 positions. Doesn’t have to be 11, just a number that is potentially reasonable.
Option 3 seems like the best. Even though 3 of my top 7 are Collingwood. It just means that we get round 1, 3 rounds of speedbumps, regular season.
How about with option 3 we play OR rather than round 13. I get it seems odd as there's 8 teams with the bye rather than 2 but by playing all of the first 4 rounds every team has 1 bye so all players are effected equally, as opposed to players from 7 teams not missing any games and GWS players missing 2. (Tom Green is out for the season so this isn't a personal plea ) With 8 AFL teams out in OR, some FU teams will get destroyed but you'd think they would then have a significant advantage over the next 2/3 weeks. If we could do the reduced team sizes that would make this even more workable.
FWIW ts itself won't be able to manage reduced lists with emergencies as the emergencies would automatically score in place of any ommisions, including blanks. Should you want to play those reduced team rounds, and I totally understand why, it would require the rule to be that NO emergencies can be named, and playing spots meet the criteria, ie 2 -3 - 1 3 onfield or whatever setup is agreed on.