How to pick your Draft Order
How to pick your Draft Order
Arguably the best part of a draft fantasy football system is the initial Draft. To kick the season off, you and your mates get together to sign up a full squad of players before their first match-up. Each player can only be signed to an individual team, meaning every manager's team is completely unique.
By design, this means that our system heavily rewards your knowledge and preparation. Going into the draft you want to know exactly how you rank each player against others in the same position, and what order you would ideally pick them up.
The final unknown piece of the puzzle though, is which order you and your mates will sign their players. Everyone wants to pick first to bag a Damian Mckenzie, Richie Mo'unga or Ardie Savea, but there can only be one first overall Draft pick. This is where the Draft order events come in to play!
Some teams will just randomly pick their draft positions, but we prefer elaborate games of chance that are great events in themselves. Some of our favourites include:
9 year olds Flag races (a surf life saving event) - each manager gets a child to represent them, as each is eliminated that managers drafting fate is set into history.
Crab Racing - Who's hermit crab will finish first?
Dog races - You'd had to draw the long shot dog!
Dodgeball - Randomly allocate yourself a player, then last man standing wins!
This year we have gone with something a little different. Our fantasy competition kicks off round 1 of Super Rugby Aotearoa, which of course means we miss Super Rugby AU round 1 (which starts a week earlier). To make the most of the season we figured why not use AU Rd1 to get our Draft Order with a Super 6 man fantasy round, winner takes all!
Firstly we randomly allocated an order through the first site that pops up from a quick google search.
To evenly spread the 60 starting players (from the 4 Aussie teams) we decided each player would get:
1 Front Rower (prop or hooker)
1 Lock
1 Backrower
1 Playmaker (scrum-half or fly-half)
1 Centre
1 Outside Back
The numbers in each position corresponds to the player in the yet to be named starting jersey. For instance, if I randomly draw number 9 in the back row draw, I'll be allocated the Force No. 8. Our random draw played out as follows:
Adding to the anticipation, we know which positions we have been drawn, but we don't know who the players are until the team is finally named. I know personally, I'm praying the Taniela Tupou is named in the Reds No.3 jersey to start the year. No test player rests this year, please!!
Our 8 man league will get together for the two Super Rugby AU games when the Reds take on the Waratahs, and the Western Force take on the Brumbies. That way we can cheer home every event in the game as we desperately hope for a top score before the real Draft Rugby season starts.
This year the top Draft score will get the first choice of where they pick from in the real initial draft. We pick in a snake draft format (1-8 then 8-1 and so on) to make things more even, so even the choice of where you draft from will be a decision that could shape your season.
Do you have a favourite way to allocate your Draft position? Let us know on twitter @draftrugby.
Written by Harrison Dale