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Coaching Clinic - Overview

TheBench™ offers a unique Fantasy Sports experience placing an emphasis on keeping the game play simple, easy and enjoyable while still being rewarding for a dedicated and well researched coach.

AFL has been available on TheBench™ since 2004 and has continued to lead the way in AFL Fantasy games with respect to inovation, game play, flexibility and simplicity.

Many features available from TheBench™ can now be seen in most other AFL Fantasy sites including Banter, private Competitions, Draft Style games, On-line Draft and drag and drop interfaces.

TheBench™ as a platfrom supports any number of sports.  Currently available public competitions include:

Even more so is the customisation levels available on TheBench™ which give you back control of your Fantasy Competition. If you have been running a Fantasy Football competition for your mates on a spreadsheet, TheBench™ is the ideal platform for you as it will support any number of scoring systems, field placements and rules.

Other Fantasy Sports solutions offer overly complicated, time consuming and onerous systems that put all but the most devoted sports fan off. TheBench™ on the other hand will have you screaming out for more.

TheBench™ also allows a very high level of customisation so you can play the game to your rules. If the default wizards don't give you the power to customise the game to your liking, contact us to discuss more.

Key Features

  • Fully automated online Draft
  • Injury Updates
  • Drag and drop interface
  • Private Competitions
  • Draft or Salary Cap Game Models
  • Banter
  • Multi-way Trading
  • Customisable Club Avatar
  • User customisable site
  • Automatic statistics updates
  • Customisable rules

Since it's debut, TheBench™ has offered an original Draft sytle Competition. From 2008, TheBench™ will also offer a Salary Cap style competition for selected Codes.

In the Draft style model, Coaches in a given Competition take it in turns to pick their Squads, one Player at a time. A given player can only be listed in a Squad once. Typically Competitions have in the order of 10 to 20 Clubs.

In a Salary Cap model, each Player is given a worth. A Coach must pick their Squad such that to total worth is below the pre-determined Salary Cap.

In a Draft style model, Coaches compete only with the Clubs in their Competition. In a Salary Cap model, Coaches compete within their Competition as well as in the overall League, that is, against all other Coaches in all other Competitions.

A Season typically plays out like this, with some variation between Codes:

  1. A User registers with TheBench™ to create a private Competition. A User is a Coach of a Fantasy Club.
  2. The Coach invites his mates and/or collegues to join the Competition.
  3. Coaches nominate a Squad of Players (either in a Player Draft or constrained by a Salary Cap).
  4. A Game Fixture is drawn up where for each Round a Club is picked to play against another.
  5. For each Round, a Coach picks a Team of players from their Squad to play against the Team of the nominated opposition Club.
  6. A Team wins if their total score is greater than their opponents. The scre is based on the performance or each player in the Team (as described in detail later).
  7. In Codes that have a finals series (such as the AFL), in the last four weeks of the Home and Away season, the Clubs at the top of the Ladder will progress to the finals series to fight it out for the Competition Premiership.
  8. For Codes without a finals series (eg. EPL), or for Salary Cap style Competitions, the Club with the highest overall score throughout the whole season will be declaired the League winner.

Which Model

So which model is best, Draft or Salary Cap?

The Draft model would be the prefered option if you have a group of mates and collegues all looking to join together. The Draft model is a much more realistic and challenging game as each player can only be listed once. Beware though, the Draft process can take some time so it is worth making sure all Coaches are commited.

The Salary Cap model on the other hand provided a great option if you a looking to add some extra fun to the season and/or can't get you mates organised enough to use the Draft Model. The Salary Cap model also lets Coaches compete with Coaches from other Competitions for the overall Champion of TheBench™.

Some sports also lend themselves more toward on model or the other.  In these cases only one model will be offered of the site as a public Competition.

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