Fact: There’s more than 180,000 participating teams across both AFL Fantasy and SuperCoach. That’s a lot of people with vested interests in every game of AFL footy each weekend.

Another fact: There’s a bunch of good websites, social media accounts and podcasts which already offer sound advice and share info on AFL Fantasy and SuperCoach.

Thus you’re probably thinking launching a website focused on AFL Fantasy and SuperCoach games is nothing new. Yet here I am today launching honeyball.com.au.

When I started thinking about this project several months ago, I knew I couldn’t simply recreate what’s already out there.

To make this work, something had to set it apart from the rest, otherwise why would people bother?

It had to add value. It had to make AFL Fantasy and SuperCoach coaches better and more capable of bigger scores.

The problem is, I’m no expert. I’ve never finished in the top 10 or top 100, let alone the top 1000 in either competition, so who am I to start offering advice?

I’m an average player and I won’t pretend to be anything other than that.

But having proactively tried to take my game in both AFL Fantasy and SuperCoach to a different level over the past two seasons by taking in all these online offerings, I noted a few pertinent things;

• There’s no one-stop shop for accurate AFL Fantasy and SuperCoach-specific information from reliable sources around team news, selection and injuries,
• Most websites and podcasts focused on the micro level, like week-to-week trades,
• The most valuable podcasts were when hosts interviewed coaches with proven track records, like Selby Lee-Steere or Jon Harmey on The Traders, to discuss their long-term strategy,
• There’s an absolute busload of speculation out there,
• Statistics are confusing. By this I mean any high-level stats often cited that allegedly cascade down and impact individual players are hard to trust or understand.

With those observations at the forefront of my mind, I set about creating a platform to add value for AFL Fantasy and SuperCoach coaches.

Ultimately, I want coaches to make better, more informed decisions, leading to bigger scores. That’s the core underlying principle.

Thus I landed on the name Honeyball, which is a play on words to the 2011 film Moneyball, which relates to how the Oakland Athletics baseball team cited in the movie devised a unique or different way to recruit players.

As I said, Honeyball is something different.

The art of AFL Fantasy and SuperCoach is spending your limited budget wisely, so I want to help coaches find honey-sweet value players, hence the anthophila name.

How will honeyball.com.au do this?

Firstly, I need to note my background working in sports media for the past decade, for both elite sporting organisations as a media manager (Perth Scorchers, Hockeyroos and Kookaburras) and on the other side as a print/online journalist (Sportal, AAP, FourFourTwo, News Corp), so I’d like to think I’ve got a sound understanding on the release of information from clubs and how to get access to press conferences and good reliable info.

But I can’t do this alone, so I’ve begun recruiting a team to help me, which I’ll refer to as we.

If you’re not already following our Twitter channel, we share the latest news about AFL Fantasy and SuperCoach relevant players from press conferences with coaches (the most reputable source) and key club personnel, like football GMs and head physios. Rarely will we cite fellow players or media outlets, unless we’re really confident in their intel.

Every weekday afternoon, we’ll aggregate that information into daily reports to create a one-stop shop you can rely on.

On weekends, we’ll aggregate a rolling report per round on coaches’ reactions to injuries and suspensions from every match too.

This information will help coaches plan and make decisions based on job security, injuries, suspensions etc.

What I’m really excited about is that we’ll run weekly Q&A interviews with proven AFL Fantasy and SuperCoach coaches, such as former season and round winners and regular top 10-100 finishers, discussing their philosophy and strategy. In time we plan to turn these into podcasts.

I’ve no doubt these will help coaches think about AFL Fantasy and SuperCoach in a different way to help them get ahead.

We’ll also share top 10 lists on weekdays on our Facebook and Instagram pages with info on top scores, price rices/drops, breakevens and ownership. I know this is less ground-breaking, but it’s bloody handy.

Finally, I’m a numbers geek so we’ll publish non-prescriptive blogs based around raw data following each round relating to teams and any trends emerging in scoring, along with an ever evolving statistics section looking at the collective, not individual players, which is readily available elsewhere.

All of this content will be non-prescriptive. It’s take it or leave it. But it’s from reputable sources; coaches, Football GMs and proven AFL Fantasy/SuperCoach experts.

Ultimately, the core principle is to inform coaches to help them make smarter decisions moving forward, hopefully leading to better scores.

There’s no sting in the tail. It’s that simple. Please enjoy.

Honeyball Founder
Ben Somerford