FanSoccer

FanFooty Tutorial: Teams

Differences Between AFL Teams and FanFooty Teams
For those of you new to the game, here's a short summary of the composition of an Aussie Rules side. Teams are made up of 24 players, of which 6 have to stay on the sidelines as interchange players, or "on the bench" as the saying goes. However, those 6 players can be substituted on or off for other players as many times as the coach wants. For the 18 players named on the ground, there are six groups of three players: the full back line (full back and two back pockets), the half back line (a centre half back and two half back flanks), the centre line (a centreman and two wingmen), the half forward line (a centre half forward and two half forward flanks), the full forward line (a full forward and two forward pockets), and finally the followers (a ruckman, a ruck-rover and a rover).

All but the last group have designated areas on the ground that they start at depending on how attacking they are supposed to be, although the position the players are named at is not a strict reflection of the wide variety of roles in the free-flowing modern game of Aussie Rules. The followers are supposed to be the only ones who move around the field chasing the ball, but in reality as many as 10 players from either side will be around the ball at any one moment, especially when there is a "stoppage" (i.e. a boundary throw-in or a ball up).

Now that's quite a mouthful! For the purposes of FanFooty's system, we have simplified the individual positions into backs, midfielders, forwards and ruckmen. We also have a special position called "defence", of which there is one per AFL team, which represents the overall defensive effort of the team (i.e. how many goals they allow to be scored against them in a game). Here is a quick reference table displaying the correspondence of FanFooty positions to real AFL positions:

Player Positions Compared Between FanFooty and Real Football
FanFooty Player Positions    Aussie Rules Player Positions
BackMostly half back line, with some of the full back line
MidfielderRover, ruck-rover, centre, wings
ForwardFull forward, centre half forward, forward pockets, half forward flanks
RuckmanRuckman
DefenceFull back in particular, but also back pockets and half back line

1 Ruckman
2 Backs
3 Midfielders
3 Forwards
1 Utility (B, M or F)
1 Defence
7 on the bench
In addition to simplifying the positions, FanFooty teams only have 11 players "starting" every week instead of 18, with a bench of 7 instead of 6 making a total team list of 18, not 24. We have done this so that you can concentrate your energies more on picking the stars than dealing with huge amounts of players. It also fits our scoring system a lot better.

The allowed numbers of the various positions are listed in the box on the right.