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Game Help

The Draft

Draft Types

In Ultimate Footy each AFL player can only be owned by one team, so a Pre-Season Draft is used to select your side for the upcoming season. Unlike other fantasy AFL games where the draft is a drawn out process over several weeks, Ultimate Footy will have your draft complete within hours so you don't have to wait to start playing!

The draft order is randomised every time a new team joins the league, and the current order is displayed in the RFA column of your league ladder. From round to round the draft order reverses, so if you get the first pick in the first round you will have the last pick in the second round and then the first pick of the third round and so on. Alternatively, if you are in a custom league, your league manager can set the draft order manually.

There are currently four draft types available: Live Online, "Slow" Online, Autopick and Single Computer / Manual.

To take advantage of our Online Drafts, you will need to either create a custom league or join a custom league using a Online Draft. Similarly Single Computer / Manual drafts are only available to Custom Leagues because they require drafts to be conducted externally. Autopick drafts used for all Public Leagues, but are available to custom leagues as well.

Read more about the different draft types below.

Live Online Draft

Live Drafts are the most exciting way to get into the action. You'll log online with the rest of your league where each coach is given 1 minute per pick (by default) and picks are displayed live as they happen. To keep things moving, if a coach is not online for the draft they get a reduced time of 10 seconds per pick. If they join later in the draft their time resets to the full time limit allowed i.e. 1 minute.

Custom leagues have the ability to set the number of seconds allowed per pick. The options range from 30 seconds to 5 minutes.

Thanks to this unique setup our Live Drafts only take between 1-2 hours, not 1-2 weeks!

If you can't make it to draft day, or can't stay for the full time, you can still participate by submitting Pre-Draft Player Rankings. This is a way to rank your preferences of which players you would like to select, then when it comes to your pick the system will choose your highest ranked player that is still available.

Even if you don't submit Pre-Draft Rankings your team will still be drafted according to the Ultimate Footy projected rankings, a carefully constructed ranking list made specifically for assisting with the draft. It factors in player performance over the last few seasons, potential improvement or deterioration as well as average draft position from other drafts.

"Slow" Online Draft

"Slow" Online Drafts operate similar to Live Online Drafts, but rather than 1 minute per pick coaches can have up to 24 hours. This allows more time for coaches to analyse each selection and may involve the draft stretching over a week or two. This style of draft may also be useful if your league can't find a time where everyone is available for a live draft.

To keep the draft ticking over each coach can set up a short list of preferred players and autopick preferences. Emails alerts are also used to notify coaches when it's their pick.

Autopick Draft

Autopick drafts do just what the name suggests, drafts your team automatically. Each team in the league has the option of setting Pre-Draft Player Rankings, which are used to draft players.

The Autopick system works by selecting the highest-ranked available player (based first on your pre-rankings and then our default rankings) at the time of each pick.

Our draft algorithm will ensure you select enough players to fill out you starting squad, using your last few picks to select the highest ranked players in any position that might be undermanned.

Single Computer / Manual Draft

This option is great if you want to conduct your draft manually and just submit the results to us. A draft day is always a great way to kick off a fantasy season so if you can get your mates organised we recommend it, and then let Ultimate Footy run the competition for you.

To make the recording of picks easier a Single Computer Draft screen is available. This includes a player list, a list of recent and upcoming picks as well as countdown clock to make sure teams don't take too long.

Pre-Draft Rankings

If you can't make it to draft day, or can't stay for the full time, you can still participate by submitting Pre-Draft Player Rankings. This is a way to rank players from your most preferred to least preferred, and will be used by our system to choose the highest ranked undrafted player each time it becomes your pick.

Pre-Draft Rankings can be accessed by going to Draft > Edit Pre-Draft Rankings. Simply drag and drop or use the arrows to move players up and down this list until you've formed your preferred order. Everyone has players they don't want to pick which is why you can move players straight to the bottom of the list if you're not a fan. If you've already set a ranking list in another league and want to copy it across simply hit the Import Rankings button and select which league to import from.

Even if you don't submit Pre-Draft Rankings your team will still be drafted according to the Ultimate Footy projected rankings, a carefully constructed ranking list made specifically for assisting with the draft. It factors in player performance over the last few seasons, potential improvement or deterioration as well as average draft position from other drafts.

Restoring a Keeper League

The end of the season doesn't have to mean the end of your fantasy league. "Keeper Leagues" are a great way to run your league over multiple seasons, meaning you can keep the team list you worked so hard to build!

All Ultimate Footy leagues are automatically eligible to be operated as keeper leagues so you can return next season and keep playing. Similarly if you've played previously or already operate a keeper league using spreadsheets it's possible to import your team lists prior to the draft.

League managers can import previous seasons lists prior to the draft by going to Tools > Edit Draft Selections. Here you'll see a list of draft picks with a field to let you type in the player to assign to each pick. You're not required to fill out every pick for every team - any picks that don't have a player allocated to them are able to be used by that team in the Pre-Season Draft to draft from the unowned player pool.


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