The Rugby Magazine - Fantasy Rugby

[Puja]

So, we've got top 4 of:

Scrumhead
?Arya Shark?
SwitchSkier
Puja

So for the Premiership-style semi-finals, we have:

Scrum of the Earth vs Pujover Tries
Arya Shark vs Switches Selection


In the Cup competition of the people who are paying attention on here, we have Shiny, Stom, Scrumhead, Puja, SwitchSkier and Peej - anyone know what Peej's team name is? I'll draw conferences to find us the finalists for that.

Puja

[Peej]

I'm the London Platypodes

[Scrumhead]

Pretty sure Arya Shark is Sam Shark but I haven’t seen him post here in a LONG time.

[Puja]

Right, then. Using the magic of a random number generator, I've sorted us into two conferences:

Pool A
Pujover Tries
Scrum of the Earth
Daft Serious

Pool B
London Platypodes
Switches Selection
Honeybadgers

Top of each pool plays cup final next week, the two seconds play for the Plate, the two losers third places go into the bowl final. Time for everyone to go figure out if they want to pick more than one Saint or Glaws player in their starting XVs.

Puja

[Scrumhead]

I’ve gone with 6 Saracens and 3 each from the others in my starting XV.

[switchskier]

First off, well played scrumhead. Dominated the league.

Taken a risk and gone with 7 Gloucester players. Think there's just a small chance of a shock.

[Scrumhead]

Thanks! Definitely going to be pretty close on our play-offs - on current totals, I’m beating Puja by 6 points, but that may change when the points are finalised!

[Shiny]

My master plan of 5 Glous and 4 Saints in my starting line up might not have worked. Initial points are listed as 334.

[Shiny]

Final points 365.

[Stom]

I made all the wrong decisions... Typical.

[Scrumhead]

TBH, I’m quite surprised at how low most players scored given how many tries there were yesterday.

Obviously I that attacking stats are only part of it, but still, not many players scoring over 20pts.

[Puja]

So results of the first rounds of the playoffs:

Scrum of the Earth 396 vs Pujover Tries 363
Arya Shark 362 vs Switches Selection 310

Just like real life, the top two finished in the top two for a reason and dismissed the 3rd and 4th ranked teams. Although I'm still irked that I went from a 6 point loss to a 33 point one after final points recalculation happened. Bloody Richard Barrington wrecked my weekend's points!

That leaves our grand final of:

Scrumhead vs Sam Shark

In the Cup competition, the pools look like this:

Pool A
Scrum of the Earth....396
The Pujover Tries.....363
Daft Serious RFC......356

Pool B
London Platypodes.....371
Honeybadgers..........365
Switches Selection.....310

I can't get away from being beaten by Scrumhead, but Peej has a great week to top Pool B and go through to the Cup final. Next week's games:

Cup final: Scrumhead vs Peej
Bowl final: Puja vs Shiny
Plate final: Stom vs Switch

Puja

[Scrumhead]

I had Barrington too TBF. His stats are actually pretty shocking. I think I read 3 attempted tackles 2 missed! Good going to score minus points in a team as dominant as Saracens!

[Peej]

Surprised I did as well as I did, some of my calls really didn't pay off as I hoped they would!

[Scrumhead]

Next weekend I can see us all picking very similar teams. It could come down to who makes the best choice of captain.

[Scrumhead]

Anyone else pick Itoje as captain? As of now, he’s on -12 for me!!!

[Shiny]

Anyone else pick Itoje as captain? As of now, he’s on -12 for me!!!

Thankfully not, but I did change from White to Kvesic this morning. Odd that Itoje got man of the match though.

[Scrumhead]

Yep. Completely undeserved MoM award.

The scores normally shift a bit when they’re finalised, but as of right now, I’m mirroring the Chiefs. Win the regular season and semi final and then narrowly lose when it really counts.

Can’t believe I swapped my captain from George to Itoje.

[Shiny]

383 points for me which sees me in 7th place over the season in our little league. I am the Sale Sharks of fantasy rugby.

[Scrumhead]

Congratulations Peej ...

[Puja]

Better belated than never - here are the final scores of our playoffs:

Firstly, the Grand Final saw fantasy imitating life, as Scrumhead lost to Sam Shark despite winning the regular season.

And in the Cup competition:

Cup final: Scrumhead 435 vs Peej 461
Bowl final: Puja 460 vs Shiny 428
Plate final: Stom 403 vs Switch 283

Scrumhead walks away with nothing from two finals, I justify my existence with a Bowl trophy, and Stom walks over Switch (who appears to have forgotten to change his team) for the Plate.

Puja

[Puja]

Incidentally, what did we all think of the playoffs rules in the Fantasy Rugby? I wasn't a huge fan - felt like there was too much luck and not enough skill when you had free reign to pick people. The budgets were worthless as a limiter, as you could just buy the XXIII you wanted and fill out the squad with cheap fodder - the remaining 5 were utterly pointless. Maybe better if they sold all your players and then halved the amount of money with a minimum squad size of 23? Or if you kept the same squad as the regular season and were only allowed to make 8 transfers for free each week (with 4 more with 20 point penalties) - that way it'd reward those who planned their squads towards the playoffs and give more decision-making on who to sell and buy.

Puja

[Scrumhead]

Obviously, I thought they were terrible.

Joking aside, I actually preferred it without the play-offs TBH.

I think it was an experiment that worked OK, but it was always going to be difficult to find a simple, but fair way to do it.

[Stom]

Yeah, picking a squad for the playoffs was a pain. Just a bit pointless for me.

[Shiny]

I enjoyed the playoffs from a league on here point of view as a little bit of extra fun but I think they can tweak the rules for next year.