News

2023 MSD Trade Periods, Delistings & Deadlines

Below are the MSD, trade and delisting details:

  • Trade Period opened: at the end of Round 9.
  • Delistings & Trade Deadline: Wednesday 24th May 2100 AWST.
  • Release of MSD Draft order: likely late that Wed night or early Thursday morning of the draft.
  • 2022 MSD: Thursday 25th May at 2000 AWST
  • Post MSD Trade Period Opens: as soon as the MSD ends
  • Post MSD Trade Period Ends: at the start of AFL Round 12

Notes:

  • Delistings should be submitted on this Delistings Sheet
  • Trades should be submitted in the Bench Banter section
  • MSD Draft Order (provisional, subject to trades/delistings) can be seen in our 2023 Drafts sheet
  • As there is plenty of time to trade this year so all trades made are final at the time the trade (unless you both agree otherwise). So if you trade this week and your player traded in is injured in Round 10, that’s too bad.
  • Trades should be made in good faith and be “approximate fair value” based on value in the current season.
    • The value of players who may be retained in future seasons is not taken into account in this assessment e.g. if coaches trade a young average player (who may become a great player in the future) for an established great player in a straight swap, that would be deemed to be not approximate fair value. 
    • There is wide allowance given in the determination of approximate fair value. However trades that are clearly one-sided that appear to unreasonably advantage one team or make one team uncompetitive may be declared as “nefarious trades” and disallowed by the Administrator.

Using the Importrange function to have a live draft feed into your googlesheet

This post follows on from this initial post – you may wish to read that first, though not essential.

If you have built a googlesheet with your HFFL stats tailored to your liking and you would like a live feed of the drafted players appearing in your sheet, so that you can have them automatically removed from your stats rankings in real-this post explains how.

Note this will only work in googlesheets, not in excel.

Note also you need to give The Emperor a big hug for sharing this with you.

The following example is for the HFFL 2023 draft. In future years you can follow the same steps but will need to use/reference the new HFFL Drafting sheet for that year.

  • Within your own tailored stats googlsheet, create a new sheet called “Drafts”
  • Copy and paste the Draft sheet from HFFL 2023 Drafts into this newly created sheet of your own called “Drafts”
  • You don’t have to copy everything but I’d at least copy columns A-H so you include the column “Player Picked” and their “Club”
  • Then in your sheet called “Drafts” enter the following formula (copy and paste it) into the first cell in the Player Picked column (cell G2)
    • =IMPORTRANGE(“https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Siahxp6FPRPgJPV8bnWAqjq5fX0muGCUZ55aUIcjgZc/edit#gid=0″,”Draft!G2:G310”)
    • This formula makes your spreadsheet go to the HFFL 2023 Drafts spreadsheet and ask for permission to live feed the data in the Player Picked column into your sheet.
    • If copying and pasting that formula into the cell doesn’t work, then you just need to recreate that formula from scratch. See Google’s Importrange information showing how. It only has 2 parts – the web link of the sheet you are feeding data from and the sheet/range of the cells you are importing.
    • Then you need to approve this request. If you look at the HFFL 2023 Draft sheet it should ask you to approve this request there and as an Editor you should be able to approve the request. You only have to every do this once.
    • From then on every drafted player typed into the Player Picked column will appear on your new Drafts sheet live.
    • If you would like their AFL Club to also appear in your Club column then repeat the above steps and copy and paste this formula but this time into the top cell in the Club column (cell H2)
      • =IMPORTRANGE(“https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Siahxp6FPRPgJPV8bnWAqjq5fX0muGCUZ55aUIcjgZc/edit#gid=0″,”Draft!H2:H310”)
      • Right, now that you have the live draft data feeds of Players Picked coming into your Stats sheet, you to set up your sheet in a way to use this data to remove players from your stats sheet as they are drafted. To do that copy what I have done in the 2022 Stats – Undrafted sheet.
        • Essentially you will need to insert an “Undrafted” column then add the “Match” and “Count” columns on the very right of the sheet and use those formulas.

New Stats for Undrafted Players available live

In order to help make the league more competitive and help some of the stragglers, as well as make the draft run more quickly the Emperor is freely donating a statistical advantage to the group of coaches. He has trained Logistix who is now passing this on. 

This year, in the HFFL 2023 Drafts spreadsheet you will find a new spreadsheet called “2022 Stats – Undrafted”.

This will show you live in real-time as the draft proceeds which players in the Stats sheet remain Undrafted so you can select them. This will make it very quick to find for example “the next best marker available”.

Note this will only work on desktops/laptops as the special filtering explained below you need to do to rank the stats by positions is not available on the smartphone version of googlesheets.

If you wish to use this sheet you must follow this rule – you are not allowed to sort or filter the sheet in any way that affects how other coaches view the sheet. I have full live audit view on the sheet so I can see if anyone breaches this rule – if you do, you will be banned from using the sheet for 1 year (i.e. I will remove your access live during the draft).

What this practically means is, do not use the following functions:

  • Data – Create a Filter
  • Data – Sort Sheet (or Range).

Instead there is a clever function that will let you alone filter the sheet how you want but won’t affect how any other people see the sheet. As mentioned above, this function only works on desktops/laptops. From the top menu do this:

  • Data – Filter Views – “Rank by Stats”
  • This puts the arrow button filters at the top of each column but only does it for your unique view, no one else’s
  • Then choose the relevant stats category (e.g Ma for marker) and click on the arrow at the top and “Sort Z-A” to rank from highest to lowest.

Now that this is explained, the key point is that you choose Data-Filter Views and don’t choose “Data-Create a Filter”. I’m labouring this point as they are easily confused and right next to each other. The former only changes your view of the sheet, the latter changes everyone’s view.

I have also placed the above instructions about how to choose the Filter view in as a note in the little green cell (A1) on the sheet.

Now some of the more advanced spreadsheet users will prefer to create their own stats spreadsheet rather than use this one. If you are such a person, instead of using the above there is a special trick to be able to have a live data feed of the players who are drafted come into your own googlesheet of stats (not excel, only google. With that occurring, you can easily have those players removed from your stats list so you know who the best available players are.

Here are instructions for how to use this trick.

Summary of HFFL 2023 Drafting, Positions & Scoring

Drafting

Coaches coaches select a squad of 19 players at the PSD. They then can freely draft 2 more players from the remaining available players anytime from the end of the PSD, to the start of the season.
This will give a total squad size of 21 (1 less than last year and 2 less than years prior).

Then after the MSD, this squad size will be increased by 1 to 23.

Positions

Each week coaches name 10 starting players on field and 4 bench players

The starting field players are:
– 2 Forwards
– 1 Half Forward
– 1 Marker
– 1 Extractor (specialised midfielder)
– 2 Midfielders (accumulators)
– 1 Tackler (specialised midfielder)
– 1 Half-Back
– 1 Utility

Scoring


The players score as follows, noting all positions have 2 x Frees Against removed from their score except forwards who are exempt:
– Forwards: 6 x goals + 1 x behinds + 1 x I50
– Half Forwards: 4 x goals + 4 x I50
– Markers: 4 x marks
– Extractor: Disposals/2 + 2.5 x Clearances
– Midfielders: 1 x disposals
– Tackler: Disposals/2 + 3 x Tackles
– Half Back: 3 x R50 + 1 x I50
– Utility: 4 x Goals + 2 x marks + 2 x tackles + 0.5 x kicks + 0.25 x handballs + 0.40 x Hit Outs

Note:
R50 = Rebounds from 50 and
I50 = Inside Fifties.

Changes for season 2023

  • Ute: HO multiplier increased to 0.40 (from 0.35)
  • Extractor: Clearance mutliplier has decreased from 3 to 2.5

For the full rules see the HFFL Rules document

Slight Change to 1st Year Rookie Rule Qualification

To retain a Rookie at their first PSD, the maximum number of career games they can play and still qualify as a rookie has increased to 27 games (from 26). This is because the number of regular season games per AFL club has increased in 2023 from 22 to 23.

This change will apply in all years when the number of regular season matches per AFL club is 23.

This is an Administrative Decision (helpfully suggested by Plugger with thanks).

For full details of the Rookie Rule and qualifying criteria in different years see this original post.

Post 2022 Review – Extractor Adjustment

The following is an Administrative Decision following the Post 2022 Logistix Stats Review.

 Decision: In the calculation of the Extractor score, the Clearance multiplier will be reduced from 3 to 2.5. 

i.e the Extractor score calculation will be Extractor = Disposals x 0.5 + Clearances x 2.5

(Please note, while this is an Administrative Decision, the RGC were also consulted who notably hold 5 of the top 6 Extractors amongst them and still cited no major issues with this plan.)

Rationale Summary:

The Extractor was not designed to be the league’s most dominant position. It was only brought in as a specialised midfielder so we could utilise the clearance stat.

The Ute Reform and Tackling Reform resulted in large drops in their average Elite Scores which, as an unintended consequence, made the Extractor the most dominant position. The Extractor has been too dominant for years and consequently this change has been coming for years but there were several other reforms required that took precedence and Logistix wanted to give it more time to see if the trends reversed by themselves but they haven’t. In fact they are are worsening – The Extractor is both the highest averaging position but also has relatively high variance in its scoring making the difference between having a top Extractor and a decent Extractor too big, their value relative to other positions too large, and consequently, too great an impact on the outcome of a game.

This change brings the Extractor back into the pack with all the other high value positions (Ute, T, Ma, Mi) and the Ute returns as the highest scoring position consistent with HFFL design history.

Full Rationale

The history of HFFL stats design was that Ute, the great all rounder, was the most valuable position by a small margin. This was ok especially given many of the top Utes are routinely played in other positions, so the actual number of true Utes near the top was much smaller and generally at lower averages than the raw stats suggested, after removing those players playing in other positions.

The Ute Reform and Tackling Reform resulted in large drops in their average Elite Scores which made the Extractor the most dominant position. Below displays the change in the average Elite scores over the past 6 years for the high value positions:

– Ute decreased by 9 points

– Tackler decreased by 5 points

– Extractor increased by 1 point

– Marker and Mid stayed about the same

Additionally HFFL stats design is that while it is acceptable for lower scoring positions, like the forwards and halfback, can have high variance (standard deviation) in their scores (measured best by the Coefficient of Variation – CV – explained below), the highest scoring positions need to have lower variance in their scores. Unfortunately the Extractor now has both the highest Elite scores and high variance.

The Extractor has been too dominant for years and consequently this change has been coming for years but there were several other reforms required that took precedence and Logistix wanted to give it more time to see if the trends reversed by themselves but they haven’t. In fact they are are worsening – with the Extractor being both the highest averaging position but also having relatively high variance in its scoring, this makes the difference between having a top Extractor and a decent Extractor too big, their value relative to other positions too large and consequently too great an impact on the outcome of a game.

Stats to Review

  • This sheet shows the End of Season Stats with this modification made. You can see it brings top Extractors from a huge score of 40 and 36 down to 36 and 32, back closer to the levels of top players seen in other high scoring positions such as Ute, T, Ma, Mi. 
  • However the most useful sheet to review is this sheet showing the Historic Elite Stats updated to 2022 with this change
    • See the sheet Summary of Historic Elite Stats
    • I’ve introduced a new useful statistic known as the Coefficient of Variation (CV). It demonstrates how much variance there is in the position relative to the average scores of the position (i.e the Standard Deviation divided by Average). 
    • You’ll see that high CV positions such as F and Hb (around the 10% mark) are low averaging positions By contrast the ute and mid is a low (CV) position around 5% but average reasonably highly. 
    • The Extractor has been sitting around the 7% mark lifting to 9% this year. Even at 7% this is too high for a position with such a high elite average, but at 9% it is extreme. 
    • By adjusting the Clearance multiplier to 2.5, the CV stays high but the impact of this is less in terms of dominance because the elite averages are now brought back down to the pack of the other high scoring positions. 

So what is required now is not Extractor Reform as such, just a small Extractor Adjustment: reducing the Clearance multiplier from 3 to 2.5. This change brings the Extractor back into the pack with all the other high value positions (Ute, T, Ma, Mi) and the Ute returns as the highest scoring position consistent with HFFL design history.

Post 2022 – Change to the HO Multiplier

The following is an Administrative Decision following the Post 2022 Logistix Stats Review.

(the RGC were also consulted)

Decision: The HO multiplier in the Ute calc will increase from 0.35 to 0.40.

Rationale Summary

This is an obvious and necessary adjustment to incrementally bring the ruckman back into the game, required due to an unexpected collapse in AFL Hit Outs (HO’s). It’s a small, judicious change year on year rather than overreacting all of a sudden. 

Full Rationale:

A couple years ago the league voted for a double change to the ute score – to effectively reduce the value of handballs at the same time as reducing the HO multiplier from 0.5 to 0.3.

This change really improved the Utes by creating true allrounders as top Utes, many of whom are not otherwise rewarded in other categories. 

However unfortunately this killed ruckmen in the HFFL. 

So last year we took a small step to reverse the damage by increasing the HO multiplier from 0.3 to 0.35. Unfortunately this has not done enough. The reason is there has been an unexpected collapse in the total HOs of the top ruckman since the COVID year.

See this screenshot showing an almost 30% drop in total hitouts of the top 6 ruckman from 2018 to 2022! [COVID year excluded]

This was obviously unexpected!

So we simply need to adjust the HO multiplier again up to 0.4 to account for the collapsing HOs. 

A summary of the situation is shown in the below screenshot that shows the number of ruck Utes that are Elite, 11-20 or 21-30 depending on the HO multiplier. 

You can see by increasing the HO’s back to 0.4 using both 2021 and 2022 stats, we bring 2 more ruckman into the top 30. Additionally, we increase the ranking of the top 2 ruck Utes without making them dominant. 

I’ve provided a spreadsheet below showing the above 2 sheets and also the HFFL 2022 and 2021 stats demonstrating the different options for the HO multiplier of 0.35 and 0.4. I’ve highlighted the ruckman stats in yellow and they are also obvious as I have left the HO column visible as well.

HFFL 2022 Logistix Stats Review – HO Multiplier

Kind Regards,

Logistix

Post MSD Free Drafting Period 2022 Trial Ends

Dear Coaches,

This season we trialled a Post MSD Free Drafting Period.

While useful for many coaches (7 participated), on review of the period now it appears the least engaged coaches did not participate. As such this has the potential in future seasons to entrench disadvantage for said coaches compared to the more engaged coaches.

While as you know, I’m always keen to innovate and improve the HFFL, I’m not keen to make it feel like it requires more effort for individual coaches to remain competitive, balancing HFFL against other life priorities.

Given this, I have decided this 2022 trial will end and it will not continue in future years.

Thanks to those who provided feedback.

Kind Regards,

Logistix

The details of this Post MSD FDP are below for record keeping purposes and such that it can be studied in the future, in case a variant was proposed.

Message sent on 25th May 2022:
Dear Coaches,
After the success of the post PSD-FDP this season, we are going to trial a post MSD-FDP and it will last approximately 1 week:

It will start at 0800 AWST this Friday 27th May and end 1 week later at the beginning of R12 (Friday 3rd June 5:50pm AWST).

The end coincides with the end of the post-MSD trading period and was chosen for both as R12 represents the start of the bye rounds.

During this FDP, coaches may delist any player and recruit any available player on the bench at any time.

This is an Administrative Decision after consultation with the RGC. If it is successful, next season it will simply start at the end of the MSD and finish at the same time (so will be a couple weeks).

Any objections please advise.

Kind Regards,

Logistix

Learnings from the 2022 MSD Debacle

Key identified issues

  • Coaches were provided too much access and required to do too much for themselves on the official drafting spreadsheet.
  • Instead of saving time for Logistix, this cost enormous time and created chaos.
  • This resulted in substantial inconsistencies in the delistings on the Drafting sheet versus the Bench
  • This also resulted in various accidental modifications made to the Drafting spreadsheets (including importantly the “AFL Squads” sheet) which broke the formulas and lead to mayhem at the draft.

Solutions for 2023

  • The Drafting Sheet will remain locked by Logistix between the end of the PSD until the very beginning of the MSD. Only at the MSD itself will coaches be granted editing rights again
  • Coaches will be reminded to make a copy of the Drafting Sheet and manipulate their copy as they need to (under File – Make a Copy), rather than manipulating the original sheet we share.
  • Delistings and Trades will be posted here on the HFFL Online site in specific posts only – a Trades post and a Delistings post. They will be the official set of Delistings and trades. After the Delistings Deadline, Logistix will use this to modify the Drafting Sheet (Delisted Players, Outward Trades, Inward Trades).
  • Coaches can at their leisure also delist their players on The Bench but what happens on The Bench will not be relevant to the MSD
  • When the official Draft Order is published, all coaches will be required to check their own picks to ensure they have the correct draft picks allocated to them. If they fail to do so, they will be liable for any adverse outcomes they suffer as a result.
  • Logistix will require 2 laptops at the MSD (as well as the PSD) in order to troubleshoot issues on the fly