Many Super Rugby seasons ago, it was suggested to me that I join Supersport’s then Super 14 Fantasy League. I signed up rather hesitantly as it seemed the league would require one to spend a large amount of time on the internet which I wasn’t to keen about. That said, after week one where I scored a whole bunch of points and was ranked in the top 50 out of 9000 or so other fantasy leaguers, I’ve never looked back. Since then, the online Fantasy League has become somewhat of a business, featuring many major sporting competitions. The Tri-Nations, the Tour de France, our local PSL soccer, Formula 1, the Ryder Cup, and the Euro soccer tournament all generate a subsequent online league. In the USA, the leading National Football League players even have full length television commercials promoting the public to pick them for their fantasy team. This hasn’t really caught on with the other leagues yet, but the day I see Bakkies Botha or Kimi Raikonnen on television with a cheesy grin trying, in English, to convince fans to select them is the day I quit.
In a general nutshell, the Super Rugby Fantasy League requires you, the ‘manager’, to pick 15 players that you reckon are going to score tries and/or be in a winning team. If your selected player scores a try, he gets points; if he’s in the winning team he gets points; if he gets a yellow, he gets deducted points and so on. The aim is to build your points up week by week over the duration of the competition.
Apart from being a manager in the obligatory global league, one can set up their own league and invite their friends/enemies/bosses/nerds in the IT department to challenge them. This is by far the best feature of the fantasy league, as the message board allows all the managers in the created league to chat with one another. In doing so, a quite internet oasis full of man talk (translation: outlandish claims), numbers, comical pictures, strategies and rugby speak is created. It’s a safe haven devoid of real life hassles and stresses. Despite all this, the competitiveness gene that is present in most if not all males comes out kicking and screaming, demanding to be heard even if it is merely through a barrage of conveniently arranged pixels on the monitor. Never has masculinity been portrayed so vividly in words. As a result, this little corner of the internet becomes something you might keep from your wife or girlfriend, like a dirty little secret.
Being involved in a fantasy league also transforms the way you watch rugby. Instead of just cheering the side you want to win, you shout like crazy for individuals. Even if your selected prop gets the ball 60 metres out and he already has a tackler hanging on his jersey, for a split second you just believe he will go the distance. And the same applies to all your other selected players whenever they touch the ball. Another great aspect is that ‘dead rubber’ games are no more, as every team with one of your fantasy XV in them becomes a team you support as if your life depended in it. Then once you have looked at your fellow manager’s teams for the weekend, you find yourself swearing and cursing at their fantasy XV members, willing them to drop the ball, get yellow carded, sprain both their ankles simultaneously and/or get broken in two pieces like that poor guy in Spanish club rugby.
Yes, one could argue that joining an online fantasy league is a geek’s way of ‘playing’ rugby, a kind of desk-chair-double-click rugby. But the reality is that fantasy leagues get more people interested in the chosen sport, people that before only had a limited interest. Surely involvement at any level is better for sport than no involvement at all. At the end of the day, as long as the winner is sport, it can only be a positive thing. For sure, the traffic through the sports web pages as managers everywhere research their players doesn’t hurt the profits of certain media companies, but one can’t be too cynical. Fantasy Lague is just too much fun to think about its downside.
