Fantasy Rugby

If you've ever played fantasy sports, you'll know that it is a great way to make sports even more exciting. They force you to become more analytical about the sport and its players, and even makes you become more invested in teams you usually don't care about. In any fantasy sport, whether it is fantasy football (soccer) or fantasy baseball, online participants buy and trade virtual team members. Those team members accumulate points reflective of their contribution to their actual team. All your virtual team members' points are combined to give you your total fantasy score. Usually you have limited numbers of trades and money to spend on players, and you can buy and sell players in anticipation of upcoming games or to take into account injury, form or byes.

Fantasy Rugby follows these same principles. Depending on which fantasy rugby game you are playing, you have a set amount of team members, dedicated to specific positions on the field (check out this rugby union hub for more information on the actual game of rugby) and this article for how the rugby positions work). There are set amount of trades, which is when a player is bought or sold. Care is needed when trading because a player's value is usually dictated by how many people own that player. Therefore, if the player gets injured they need to be sold quickly before their value plummets. In most fantasy rugby games if a team is incomplete at the start of a round then the whole team will fail to accumulate any points for that round. This may happen due to a lack of attention to round cut-offs, or because the owner ran out of money to complete the line up. A key fantasy rugby tip is to always ensure the whole team is playing that round. However, it is better to be carrying a non-playing team member than to have an incomplete team.

The great thing about fantasy rugby is that the key performance indicators that determine a player's points reflect the contestable and wide ranging facets of the game of rugby union. Points are scored from tackles made, line breaks, catching, passing and for participation in scrums and lineouts. When a player scores actual points, such as a try, penalty, conversion or drop kick then they accumulate virtual points for that too. The variety of virtual points available make fantasy rugby union a particularly exciting fantasy sport, especially because the virtual points are quite specific to each position. You won't see many backs getting points for scrums or lineouts and you won't see many forwards getting points for kicks at goal.

If you're not a rugby fan, then you should be. A good taste of the game is rugby sevens, which is faster and shorter than the fifteen a side game, so is a good gateway into the sport. If you are a rugby fan then I encourage you to give fantasy rugby union a 'try'. You're understanding of the game and a player's contribution will increase and you'll certainly become more invested in each rugby game.

A word of warning though, fantasy rugby can take over your life! You'll become obsessed with rugby fixtures, player injuries and round cut-off times. You'll love it.

Although there are not as many fantasy rugby options as there are for baseball or football/soccer, there are quite a few sites out there. There are a variety of Fantasy Rugby sites available. Early on FantasyRugby.com came onto the scene, but that seems to have tapered off over the last few years. The good thing about FantasyRugby.com was that you only needed seven players in your team, which meant you didn't need to invest much time.

My favourite fantasy rugby game at the moment isTestRugby.com. I like the scoring and transfer system it has, and it has recently undergone a graphics upgrade. Super Sports and Fox Sports are also relatively popular.

Here are a few selected Fantasy Rugby options. Please let me know if you are aware of any others.

Test Rugby (testrugby.com)

Fantasy Rugby (fantasyrugby.com)

Fox Sports Fantasy Rugby (foxsport.fantasy.com.au)

Super Sport Fantasy Rugby (SuperSport.com)

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I am based in New Zealand and enjoy writing about rugby, movies and music and am also interested in property investment and travel. I operate a rugby blog and a site dedicated to Tarantino movies and merchandise and contribute to a Property Investment Tips site.