ONE OF the most talked about additions to AFL Fantasy last season was the addition of Draft Keeper Leagues.

In this format, coaches keep a number of players from year to year. If you nail one of your draft picks, you’ve got them for life … or until someone offers a trade you cannot resist.

Thousands of commissioners opted to make their Fantasy Draft league a Keeper League last year and now the fun begins.

KEEPER LEAGUES 101 Why you should try this exciting format

During the pre-season, coaches need to select their ‘keepers’ from their previous season’s squad. This happens prior to the re-draft which will include players not selected last year and those who were thrown back in the pool after not making any of your league members’ keeper lists.

Commissioners have a few jobs to do in order to set the league up for the new season.

First steps

League commissioners must go into Create league from the Draft page on the website and regenerate the keeper league from last season.

Check through the Settings to make sure they suit what your league is after. In most cases, you should be playing by the same rules as the previous year. The most important step here is to click on the Keeper League tab and set Enable keeper league to yes and nominate the number of keepers. This should be decided amongst the league. A popular number is half the squad size.

Once everyone has registered for the new season (coaches need to log into their Fantasy account), commissioners should look under Settings and Manage Teams and click the Finalise participants button. Leagues must be finalised prior to the draft or the draft won’t run. This page is also where you can assign a new coach to a team, if someone decides to leave the league. Click Set new coach for keeper team then type in the first name and email address the new coach used to register for AFL Fantasy.

This will allow league members to be able to nominate the players they wish to keep prior to the draft.

Selecting keepers

League members can nominate their keepers via the website or the free smartphone app. The deadline for keeper selection is 72 hours prior to the live draft.

If a coach has selected zero (0) keepers, they will automatically receive the maximum number of keepers allowed in the league. These will be highest averaging players from the previous season.

You don’t have to select the maximum number of keepers. If you want, you can select just one, then they would be the only player you’d keep.

As mentioned, the deadline to pick keeper players is 72 hours before your draft starts. After this point you won’t be able to edit your keeper selections. This is also when all kept players will be removed from pre-draft lists.

Live drafts

Commissioners must finalise the teams in your league before your live draft.

Keeper players are effectively selected during the live draft.

By default, they will be allocated to your final draft picks. For example, if you’ve kept five players, your last five picks will have your keepers assigned to them. Keepers will be auto-picked at the start of your turn if that pick has a keeper assigned to it. You won’t be allowed to select someone else, and you won’t have to manually pick them.

During live drafts, the game will indicate if an upcoming pick is a keeper pick; at the scroll bar at the top of the screen and in the draft order widget on the right-hand side of the screen. Ordinarily, these just show who has which pick. Now, if a keeper has been allocated to the pick, you’ll see the name of the player allocated to that pick.

League commissioners with Pro subscriptions (Lite or Deluxe) can edit specific draft picks. That includes assigning keeper players to any draft picks, not necessarily at the back of the draft. Assigning keepers to specific picks can only be done after the keeper deadline has passed. This feature is what can be used for pick trading, but the actual negotiations for pick trades will have to take place offline.

Planning ahead

Remember the positions of your keeper players so they can still fit into your team when they’re being auto-picked.

For example, if you keep a bunch of midfielders, make sure you don’t go too heavy on them during the draft.

Otherwise you will fill your on-field midfielders and interchange and have DEF/RUC/FWD spots and nobody on the interchange to fill them.

You’ll have to do pre-round one trading with your league mates or drop players for free agents in order to have a complete team.

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