About: Keeper Leagues

Want to run your fantasy team just like a real-life AFL team does? Then being part of a keeper league is for you!

In a keeper league, instead of drafting a new team every year, a certain number of players are kept by each team. At the end of each season, you select which players you want to keep on your team, which players you want to delist, and then top up your team with a draft of players of unowned and new players.

This adds another layer of strategy to the draft as you must have the future in mind.

It also means that even when your team is out of contention,you are still involved as list management never stops. How can you stockpile quality draft picks for next season? Do you trade your aging star to a contending team for their young gun? Which players on the waiver have the most future upside?

This creates both a sense of continuity from the previous seasons, as well as an incentive to pick up high upside players with superstar potential.

Slyder has been set up to accommodate keeper leagues, both new and existing.

🦊 TRADING FUTURE PICKS

A key feature of Slyder’s keeper functionality is the ability to trade future draft picks, just like they do in the AFL. Sweeten a deal for a player by attaching a high draft pick or back in your season by exchanging picks with a team you think you can beat.

The option to include a draft pick is available in the Movement Summary of each trade, for leagues who have allowed it. You can include multiple draft picks by pressing the + icon next to Draft Pick drop down

The future draft picks held by each team can be viewed on Keeper > Future Picks. You can even just trade draft picks without any players attached by pressing the Trade icon next to the pick you are after.

The Future Picks table updates automatically once a trade is confirmed to reflect the new draft order.

When trading draft picks, it’s important to note the number of draft picks exchanged must equal.

🦊 RETAINED PLAYERS

Selecting keepers and viewing everyone’s draft selections can be found under Keeper. Your league will set the number of players each team need to ‘keep’ each season, and this is typically made up of their best players - or the ones with the most potential. The deault setting is 50% of the total squad size for the League.

Teams have up to 30 minutes prior to the upcoming draft to finalise their keepers. If a team hasn’t selected all their keepers by the deadline, they will be automatically filled based on Season Average.

All players that aren’t kept will go into the pool for the next draft, along with any new draftees that have entered the AFL.

Following the draft, you will then be able to trade for the next season’s picks.

🦊 EXISTING KEEPER LEAGUES

We’ve made it super easy for you to migrate your existing keeper league over to Slyder.

Once the Commissioner has created the league and selected the desired League Settings (including selection Keeper League), the league members can join via the League Code.

Then the Commissioner can allocate players to each team via Commissioner > Edit Keepers. These players will immediately allocated to the relevant teams, removing them from the upcoming Live Draft.

When Editing Keepers, the Commissioner must allocate the right number of keepers to each team, otherwise no player will be kept.

🦊 THE LIVE DRAFT

Once the Live Draft opens, you will see all the keeper details actioned. Any draft picks that have been exchanged will be reflected in the draft order and the players that have been kept will be automatically added to each team under Teams and not available in the draft pool.

🦊 MOCK DRAFT & KEEPER

Part of the charm of keeper leagues is trying to identify the value and ranks of all players. Each coach values certain players differently depending on their existing squad and whether they are in ‘Win Now’ or ‘Win Later’ mode.

However, it’s very hard to get a gauge on where you should take certain players or what value the market puts on them ahead of your draft.

In a Slyder exclusive, we have tailored our Mock Drafts Lobby to be relevant (and super handy) for all types of Keeper Leagues.

Under the Mock Draft Lobby, you’ll find two keeper league relevant League Types:

• Keeper-New: Tailored for teams taking part of a keeper league and drafting for the first time. Every player will be in the player pool, however players with youth on their side will be prioritised

• Keeper-Existing: Tailored for keeper leagues who have played more than one season where the best players are kept and aren’t available in their league. We have removed the players that are normally kept from the pool to make the Mock Draft experience as realistic as possible

The Slyder Mock Draft allows you to go against other real-life drafters who may be part of different keeper leagues. Draft spots that aren’t filled by users will be taken up by our educated computers. The computers’ ranks are keeper relevant and regularly updated, while also learning from other player draft strategies to give you a realistic mock draft experience at all times, even when drafting by yourself.

The Mock Draft Lobby is a great way to prepare for a real fantasy draft, no matter where your keeper league is hosted. It also allows you to properly test out the Slyder platform before you decide what platform your league will draft on for the upcoming season.

🦊 CUSTOM KEEPER QUEUE

You will have access to the two queues (Season and Keeper) that can be adjusted in the Draft Prep. This allows users to set up a queue and rank players for their Single Season drafts (ie who they think will be the best performing players this season) and for their Keeper drafts (with age profiles and the future in mind).

When drafting in a Keeper League, your Keeper queue will be set to default, however you can toggle between either, depending on what stage of the draft you’re at.

The ADP (Average Draft Position) listed is a blended ADP across all League Types. A Draft Report will be made available to Magic Up - Slyder accounts and will include a breakdown of ADP per League Type, including Keeper - New (where does Will Ashcroft land in a new keeper league) and Keeper - Existing (which of the new draftees has been taken first).