13 August 2009

Fantasy Football

The football season has started, albeit only the lower divisions in the England and Scotland but the real stuff starts this weekend and normally this would be the time when I would sign up to a Fantasy Football competition but this year I’m going to give it a miss.

For those unfamiliar with Fantasy Football, the normal type of competition is where you are given a budget and you can buy and transfer players, with each player in your team scoring points depending on which position they play. Forwards get points for goals and assists whilst defenders get points for keeping clean sheets etc. It’s all very simple but it is also very competitive.

The problem comes when you have a particular player in your team and that player is then, in real life, playing against your favourite team. You want him to score a couple of goals but you want your favourite team to win. A 5-4 victory for your team with your fantasy player scoring 4 goals would be the ideal scenario, but it never works out that way. Inevitably your ‘fantasy’ player scores a couple of goals and the match finishes. You are downcast at your favourite team losing but are still somewhat pleased that you managed to pick up a few points. It’s like the old betting trick. For example if my team, Rangers were playing Celtic (aaagh – I can hardly bear to type the word), the theory is that I should place a bet on Celtic to win as if Rangers eventually win the game you don’t worry about losing your bet. And if Celtic win, you might be downcast at the loss to your fiercest rivals but at least you’ve won a few bob!

But getting back to Fantasy Football, a few years ago I was in a competition run by some people in Scotland, only one of whom I knew. It was nip and tuck for most of the season with only a few points between the top two or three players but I was coming up fast on the rails. Some of my ‘fantasy’ players had really started to perform towards the end of the season and the points were totting up each week to the extent that the top two members (who get cash prizes) started to voice their concerns in e-mails which would wing their way around the members on the Monday morning after all the results were known.

So what did the leader do? The rat transferred in most of my players (each member can have the same players as another member) which meant that he couldn’t possibly be beaten. Well – I went berserk. This was not fair play and e-mails bounced around the internet for weeks afterwards. I tried to get him disbarred but there was nothing in the rules to stop what he did. He might have won the money but he lost his credibility – creep!

The competition which had run for several years and was a great source of internet banter did not take place the following season and all because of that creep. I hope he spent his £25 wisely!

Last year Tan invited me to join his football competition and after a slow start I managed to climb to 2nd or 3rd place which had the older members asking who this upstart was. But, as with my reasons in the ‘fantasy league’ I will not be re-joining this year. The awful situation of wanting a team you like to lose heavily simply because form says they’ll lose and that is your prediction just places a dampener on the whole weekend.

Last year I knew Newcastle would lose most of their games and I predicted (in the competition) that they would but the other part of me wanted them to win so they wouldn’t be relegated. And so on a Saturday night I was torn between shouting encouragement for the ‘Magpies’ but knowing that if they did win, I wouldn’t score any points. It was all too emotionally draining.

I’m having a rest this year. Sorry guys. And as this is a football post, I just had to print my favourite football picture of all time.

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