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First topic message reminder :

Breaking News: Sale Sharks go into the top 4 for the first time this season after beating Worcester Warriors at home.

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Welcome to Season 5 of the Aviva Premiership fantasty rugby game. Below are the rules of the game which must be adhered to. If there are any situations that arise in the course of the game which are not covered by the rules, a final decision will be made by the RFU (Ozzy3213) as to how the situation will be resolved.

Senior Squads wrote:
The maximum squad size is 40 senior players. If a team has more than 40 players in their squad then they will be fined £1 million per player over the permitted amounts per day for the first seven days. If after 7 consecutive days a team still has more than the permitted number of players then the team will be fined £2 million per player per day, and fined 1 league point per player per day for the next seven days. If after this time a team still has more than the permitted number of players in their squad, the RFU (me) will remove players at it’s discretion to bring them back under the permitted numbers. There will be no right of appeal to players being removed.

Be aware that all tier one international matches which are played during the season will count in the game, and players selected in the matchday 22's for those matches will not be eligible to play for their clubs on that weekend, therefore you must give due consideration to the make up of your squad.

Academy Rules wrote:
Each team will be allowed to have a listed senior academy squad of 20 players. Players who are in the senior academy must be under 22 years of age as of 1st September 2012 (therefore must have been born on or after 1st Septmber 1990). Players who are under the age of 20 (so born after 1st September 1992) AND are in the academy of the club that you are managing in real life, DO NOT need to be listed as senior academy players as part of your 20, but are available to you in this game and cannot be poached by other clubs without paying you a fee.

Should a player not listed in your 20 senior academy players, but part of the clubs academy in real life move clubs in real life, then you will have first option of promoting him to your listed senior academy. If you choose not to take this option he will become property of the club that he moves to in real life in this game.

Transfers wrote:

• Domestic (other AP Teams)
  Each team has a budget to use in the purchase of players. Domestic transfers between AP clubs, regardless of nationality of player, should be negotiated between the respective managers, and then confirmed on the Domestic Transfer Confirmation Page.
  
  
• Domestic (Championship and below)
  Each team may during the season purchase no more than 3 players from the Championship or the National Leagues. These players must be bid for on the Championship/National League bidding page, and each bid will be considered by me on it's own merits before being accepted or rejected. No bid will be accepted until a minimum of 24 hours has elapsed from the time the bid was made, in order to afford other managers the opportunity to make a counter bid.
  
  
• Foreign
  To make a foreign transfer (i.e from any club outside of the AP, regardless of whether the player is English) a bid should be made on the Foreign Transfers Page, which will be considered by me against the posted guidelines for purchase prices before being accepted or rejected. No bid will be accepted until a minimum of 24 hours has elapsed from the time the bid was made, in order to afford other managers the opportunity to make a counter bid.
  
  Foreign transfers will unlimited during the off season and 2 during the season. The exact dates of the two transfer windows during the season is to be confirmed.
  

Player Releases wrote:
Managers may choose to release players from their clubs, for which they will be offered compensation

Compensation will be paid as follows

£2 million – current international (must have played international rugby in the previous 12 months)
£1.5 million – former international
£1m – top flight experience
£0.5m – other

If a released player plays in real life for a team outside of this game he will be deemed to have returned to that team. If not then he will be deemed to have signed for a Championship side. If another manager wants to pick a released player up, they will have to bid for him in the same way as for a foreign or Championship/National League player.

Retirements wrote:
There will be no compensation for retiring players. Should a player who retires decide to come out of retirement and play again, then he will automatically go back to the club who he was playing for in the game when he retired.

Fixtures wrote:
There will be 22 Aviva Premiership games per season, plus the play offs. There will also be Heineken Cup, Amlin Challenge Cup and Anglo Welsh Cup matches. These games will take place once a week. A thread will be put up for managers to name their teams on Thursdays, then on Fridays, managers will post the scores that they think will happen from these games (apart from games in which they are involved). An average of all predictions will be taken, and then 0.5 points added to each teams score for each prediction that had them as the winner, and that will then be the final score.

Teams wrote:
When naming your team, not only should you put the starting XV and replacements, but also tactics that your team will employ. Results will be affected by the tactics described.

In addition, each team must have the following:-

At least 10 England qualified players in your matchday 23, and at least 5 of those must be in your starting XV.

At least 2 props and 1 hooker on the bench.

All players must be eligible (not injured or banned).

Failure to comply with these rules will result in forfeiting the match and a 1 league point deduction.

If you fail to submit a team for a match, then the other team will be automatically awarded a 30-0 bonus point win. If both teams fail to submit a team, then it will be scored as a 0-0 draw.

Injuries and Suspensions wrote:
Injuries in this game do NOT reflect real life, they will be generated by me.

Players banned in real life will be ineligible for selection in this game for the duration of the ban.

Inclusion of injured/banned players will result in them being replaced by players on the bench, and the bench not having eight players, which may result in punishment if it concerns the front-row.

Punishment for fielding an ineligible player will be loss of one match point for a first offence, two for a second offence and so on.

Financial Rewards wrote:
There will be no rewards for the result of an individual match, instead the managers will receive cash for predicting.

£1.5m for descriptive predictions
£0.25m for scores on the doors predictions
If you fail to predict without first advising me that you are unable to do so that week, you will be fined £1m for a first offence, £2m for a second offence, £3m for a third offence etc.

AP finishing positions.

Champions: 8m
Runners Up: 6m
Playoff Semi Finalist Losers: 5m
5th: 4m
6th: 3.5m
7th: 3m
8th: 2.5m
9th: 2m
10th: 1.5m
11th: 1m
12th: 0.5m

Heineken Cup

Losing Quarter Finalists - £2 million each
Losing Semi Finalists - £3 million each
Runners Up - £4 million
Champions - £5 million

Amlin Challenge Cup

Losing Quarter Finalists - £1 million each
Losing Semi Finalists - £2 million each
Runners Up - £3 million
Champions - £4 million

Anglo-Welsh Cup

Losing Semi Finalist - £1 million each
Runners Up - £2 million
Champions - £3 million


If your budgets falls below minus £10 million for any reason, the administrators (ozzy3213) will step in and players from within your squad will be released for the relevant financial compensation in order to bring your budget back above minus £10 million.

Rory Clegg joins Leeds

Bet he wished he stayed at Falcons

Have a Happy New Year all!

Sgt_Pooly wrote:I suggest hitting Gloucester for SA players although I doubt Matt will sell lol

All about the bokke pooly.

New Year is the worst celebration of the year.

Trying being in dublin it's great. Uk awful for
New year . Go abroad every year for
It.
Done America Spain Kenya Caribbean etc all celebrate it
Better. We
Do
Xmas better than anywhere else though. Xmas abroad Is gash

You def need to go away, I envy you Matthew.

Have a good one boys, I'm staying in with the missus with no TV as my sky dish can't see past the scaffolding on my house.

Good times.

Happy new year guys, dragons front row getting smashed

I'v told my mate i'll be at his house party for 9 but i plan on going to bed at 8 so that's not happening. Should probs tell him...

Poor poolys missus

Getting a bit sick of watching films!

Animal farm or clitty clitty gang bang. ?

Think Matts hit the Guinness

Evening all

Right, a quick New Year message to all relating to this game.

It has been raised with me by a number of people, some who have left the game now about 'tactical predictions'. As a result I have had a look through every prediction made this season and the reasons given for it (or no reasons given for some). Whilst the game is all about opinions, and everyone's is valid, I have to be honest and say there have been some odd predictions, where they have either been absolutely miles off what every other manager has given (example 9 managers had team A winning by 1-3 points and the tenth gave team B the win by 9 points), or the reasons given have been inconsistent with the opinions generally expressed by the particular manager.

Suffice to say that if a tactical or bias element has come in then it has/will spoil the game and I'm not prepared to have that happen after 5 years of it running really well. I will therefore be keeping more of an eye on the reasons given in predos to ensure consistency and if I think people aren't playing fair I will be PM'ing them to discuss and will take things from there. If it continues after a discussion then I will have to consider whether whoever it is needs to be removed from the game.

Sorry if that sounds a bit draconian but if people think that others aren't playing fair it will spoil the game and very shortly after we will end up with no game at all. Hopefully it will never come to having to remove anyone from the game as the majority here have been together for a long time and your a good bunch really.

Anyway, hope everyone has had a grand 2012 and is looking forward to 2013.

I've noticed a lot of tactical low scoring this season, tends to make more of an impact with less for the wins.

We were trying to think of a way on other game but came up short. It's a bit more rife on here as the games more advanced.

draconian

Haven't really noticed tactical predos TBH. People generally have teams they like and don't like - eg some people rarely give certain sides wins - but don't really de that as tactical. Remember last game of last season sure nick and Steve gave me wins which stopped their sides getting a playoff spot. Most are genuine for me.

I sensed i was being robbed out of a few 66-0 wins mind.

We all h ave teams/players we rate Luke, no problem there, just looking at the consistency of reasoning mainly. I'm sure there'll be no major problems going forward.

Player ratings is an odd one. I didn't realise there could be such a gap untill I came on this game.

Players like Lee Dickson, Paddy Jackson, PDJ, Barritt etc all seem to really divide opinion.

The low scoring is an odd one. The results are always going to be closer on here than real life and it is impossible to have the random effect on here which rugby brings. Maybe in predo's people should state whether they think a TBP will come or not rather than have 30 points as the threshold.

That's an idea we can look at in the summer for next season Steve. Think I need to make a list somewhere of things to look at for next season.

One low result can just wipe out that chance of TBP.

I've always thought that wiping out the biggest and lowest scores would perhaps help with the tactical scoring a little.

Lads, I'm on for a bit and trying to get some deals done. bear with me if I don't get back to you, it's all a bit confusing with loads of offers going around.

From what I've seen, quite a few just take players ratings/ability as the team and disregard the tatctis. From opinion there are a few teams with a quilts squad, then some with the odd star player and then the bottom few with barely any. And obviously tactics can in some cases well written, that are well imposed and have the right personnel to act on it would beat most teams. I can understand obviously you wouldn't get the shock results of real life, but I think that a well out combinations can work against others etc or those without instructions. It just feels like its hottest to the point that some teams it's like an allstar team without much thought in the dynamo and composition of some sides.

Again just my opinion!

Have a good NYElads!

Units and combinations are massively important in rugby so teams with ones that would work well will get positive results predicted by me.

I don't read tactics Flux

Tactics big for me Flux, not into Harlem Globetrotter type teams. Real life form also big part for me.

Recent form pretty key, as in last 6-12 month.

I've give up reading tactics though.

For me recent form is the last 4 to 6 weeks. In the case of Super Rugby players where it's the off season then the last 4 to 6 weeks of the season. Sadly it's difficult to rate the form of those playing in Japan as I don't get to see the games.

Agree on that.

Super off season players fine by me till new super season at least.

Fourie, FdP etc hard to rate.

I'd love it if Sky or someone showed the Japanese league games.

I imagine its poop tbh. Although I read reports and Fourie, FdP etc absolutely rip it up. Just too hard to level off, although the AP is pretty poor compared to S15.

See I always make sure I read tactics, I use them for my games a lot and if people make effort in writing them then I feel people should read them or we may as well abolish tactics which I'd hate to see.

I'm after an experienced controlling 10 lads if anyone wants to swap me one.

One option to sort tactical predos Is for scores to be pm'd to Pete. See a true reflection maybe?

Also like disregarding worst predo as it eliminates tactical elements


Also got too accept some people don't like your team. I rate sales team and often award win but don't think SJE has given me more than 2 wins all season. Obviously does not like my type of players which Is fine. It's about opinions

In the hard copy of the paper it says its make or break surgery and could see him retire!

Played twice in 8 months so must be bad p

http://www.independent.ie/sport/rugby/oconnell-to-go-for-surgery-3338815.html

I think I said a few weeks back that he was fecked and was unlikely to ever string more than 3 matches in a row together again. Shame really, as at his best was a superb player, but we've not seen his best consistently since 2009.

I've not seen anywhere he's a possibly to retire. All I've seen is he's likely to miss 6N.

Tough year really, could see the end of some big name players if all rumours true.

Me and you are having a right hard time Matt (Ferris, POC, Burger, Smith)

Burger and smith both look back. Ferris back for 6n and last played November so ok.

Thought burger would never get fit. Still young but been out a long time. Really need him back

Ferris was only back 1 or 2 games though wasn't he? Bit like POC for me, Ferris has played only a few games in 6 month.

http://www.ulsterrugby.com/rugby/ulster_first_team.php?player=8358&includeref=dynamic

Played a few and awesome hc season last year

3 starts then....pretty much a full season for Ferris lol

10 games a season pretty much. Read a article from his fitness coach about how they manage him. Paul McGrath was the same in football. Barely trained and great on a Saturday.

Irish star today

" poc career in balance after deciding to have surgery. Poc will not play in time for lions and may never play again. Rod Penney said " let's hope he has full use of his faculties so he will live a healthy life. Rugby is secondary to life."

Sounds nasty. Back, shoulder and Achilles worst injuries for rugby players

Him and Ferris are a pair of cripples!

I hope they both come back, quality players. AT least POC has had a good run, Ferris is still pretty young really, be a shame for him to retire.

Lots of Irish players on way back http://www.ulsterrugby.com/rugby/ulster_first_team.php?player=8358&includeref=dynamic
Fitzgerald, Kearney, ferris and a few others. Should be a good 6 nations

I don't think Ferris is due back, heard he was touch and go for the 6N due to having ankle surgery a few weeks ago.

Seen Fitzy and Kearney are due to play soon.

Really like Fitzy as a player. Hope he comes back well, but seems brittle and likely to get injured again.

Posted wrong link here is the right one http://www.thestar.ie/star/things-are-looking-up-for-green-giant-stephen-ferris/

Hopefully see Ferris back before the Lions, be a shame for him not to tour.

Absolutely be a shoe in for lions if fit. Think 6 is a strong position for lions. Potentially have Denton croft sob ferris lydiate wood etc.

Think we will win this lions tour