Saving your team, when and why.

One significant change to Fantasy Rugby League this season is the requirement to confirm your changes and save them each week, otherwise they get discarded. (With the notable exception of your first game week) Some people aren’t sure when to have saved by as previously it was quite obvious, you made sure you saved your changes by the close of the transfer window. In essence it’s still the same, you save them before the close of the window, except the transfer window ends just before the last game of the week, during what is known as the rolling transfer window.

There is no significant difference as far as the transfer window as a whole operates, it has it’s opening at the start of the week and it’s been extended to run through to an hour before the last game of the game week rather than an hour before the first game. You get the same total of changes, 2 in a normal game week, to use throughout that entire time and it’s up to you when you use them. This period is the one during which you can make changes and when you have to save your team selection including your kickers. You must have saved those changes by the end if you want them to count. The only difference is that as the rolling portion of the window starts the players available start to change and your options for moving players positions, kicker choices etc narrow. You can choose your tatics, do you get your changes done early and saved before the first game? Or do you wait and make some late changes as the squads are announced throughout the rest of the week?

The logic behind the rolling window is hopefully obvious, it gives you the flexibility to make late changes if you still have them, especially as Sunday team news isn’t always realeased before a Thursday night kick off. But whilst allowing this, the players have to be locked down as it’s not really fair if you can watch Leeds v Warrington and then change your kickers.

But why save your changes? Well to make them count for the next game week. Previously we did a bit of legwork in this area by processing any valid pending changes but we were also guessing and as many times as we got it right that the pending changes were meant to count we also processed pending changes that people wanted discarded. Whilst redeveloping the competition code it made sense that you should explicitly confirm those changes and so that’s what’s now required. The first game week your team will be saved if it’s valid and hasn’t been previously saved and you’ll get a note to remind you to save it in future weeks but otherwise it won’t be saved automatically.  If you reach the window close without saving your team will default back to the last saved lineup or the previous game weeks lineup if you haven’t saved any changes in that game week.

Hopefully that explains things, as ever tweet me @fifthandlast or email me at dave@loverugbyleague.com if you have any futher questions. And get those teams saved, we’re nearly ready for kick off!