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A message from Speedway Star to all Fantasy Speedway League Promoters

CALLING all Fantasy Leaguers... your season starts here!

Yes, the 2012 FSL campaign launches today (Thursday) and is now officially underway, although we’re only at the team building stage at the moment with the new speedway season still nearly a month away.

Firstly, let's bring those of you who may have missed the big Fantasy League news of the winter right up to date by reiterating that our partnership with Alan Coyle and Brian Watson of fantasyspeedway. com has been renewed.

When the Speedway Star Fantasy League first went to an online game in 2007, Alan and Brian hosted the site for us at their www.fantasy-speedway.com website and that continued to be the case until 2010.

Last year, the Speedway Star Fantasy League moved to a different site while Alan and Brian continued to operate their own game at fantasy-speedway.com and we accept that, unfortunately, that led to plenty of confusion amongst Fantasy League promoters.

We have now put last year's difficulties firmly behind us and are delighted to be hooking up with Alan and Brian once again to run the official Speedway Star Fantasy League on the tried and tested www.fantasy-speedway.com website.

To herald our fresh start, we have a new-look and a muchimproved Fantasy League competition featuring some innovative new ideas that we are confident will meet with the approval of all FSL-ers. Here’s what happening in 2012...

PLAY-OFFS - as revealed in Speedway Star last week, for the first time in Fantasy League history, we will have our very own play-offs this year!

Not to decide the league title itself, it must be stressed, but as a separate competition within the FSL. As in previous years, the team which finishes top of the table with the most points will be declared Fantasy League champions and will win our first prize of £1,500.

The play-offs, however, will comprise a separate end-of-season competition featuring 64 teams who will be paired off against each other.

Ben Baker after his move to PlymouthThe top four-scoring teams from March, which is a short month in the Fantasy League seeing as the real-life action doesn’t start until the 22nd of the month, will go through to the play-offs and will be joined by the top 12 scoring teams from April, May, June, July and August.

The play-offs will start in September and will run for a period of six weeks, whittling down the 64 teams each week to 32, then 16, then eight, then four for the semi-finals and finally two for the play-off final. The winning team will secure a first prize of a trip for two people to a European Grand Prix of the winner’s choice in 2013, courtesy of James Easter’s Travel Plus Tours and the Speedway Star Travel Club.

TRANSFERS - our winter think tank of experienced Fantasy League players concentrated their efforts on devising the best transfer method possible and we believe we have come up with a new system which will suit everyone.

When the Fantasy League first began in 1995 - as a postal game in Speedway Star’s long defunct sister publication Five-One - there wasn’t even a transfer system in place!

Entrants selected their seven riders at the start of the season, sent them in by post and that was it. Got a few long-term injuries by June? Then tough luck, you’ve had it!

Clearly, that was not a great way to run a Fantasy League and it was inevitable that a transfer system would eventually come into being.

Transfers were first introduced in 2000 and since then we’ve utilised various formats and, in true BSPA style, gone through a number of rule changes.

The difficulty comes in trying to strike the right balance. Have too many transfer options available, and the skill involved in picking a good team at the start of the season which we think is an important facet of the game - is greatly diminished.

Also, teams become very similar as promoters, not unnaturally, tend to choose from a select band of proven, high-scoring riders.

On the other hand, have too few transfer options - one a month for instance - and promoters can find themselves hamstrung through no fault of their own when the big new signing they made on the first day of the month goes and breaks his leg on the second day of the month!

So, after gauging feedback from comments made by Fantasy League players via e-mail and on the fantasy-speedway.com forum, we have decided on a radical overhaul to the transfer system for this year.

For the 2012 FSL season, players will have a total of eight transfers to work with - which can be used at any time during the season from March 22 onwards. But once you’ve used up your eight, that’s it... you won’t get anymore!

We believe this will give players more freedom to manage their teams properly and eradicate the problem of promoters being badly hit by injuries and seeing their season collapse around their ears just because they’ve used up their transfer option for a given month. There will also be more onus on promoters to judge when the time is right to make a transfer and whether to use up all of your options early, or hold one or maybe two back for the final weeks of the season.

THE full list of available riders is shown on the fantasyspeedway. com website right now, so if you want to make an early start on your team planning, feel free to log on right away.

Promoters have unlimited transfer options until the day before the start of the new season on March 22, which means you can play around with as many different permutations as you like before you finally settle on your starting seven for tapes-up.

On March 22, the seven riders you have registered will be your team and your eight transfers will kick in from that moment. You could use all eight in the first week if you like, save all eight until October if you prefer, or use each one as and when required throughout the course of the season... the choice is totally yours.

The first Fantasy League points will be scored on the opening day of the season on Thursday, March 22 when Ipswich and Rye House lock horns in the Premier League’s new League Cup competition. The Rockets and the Witches meet again two nights later at Hoddesdon on March 17 but it’s not really until the following week that the season gets underway in earnest.

The first Elite League riders to score any points will be Eastbourne and Belle Vue who meet at Arlington on Saturday, March 24.

Good luck and enjoy the Fantasy League season...