Ben Waterworth is a BPL Citizen Journalist.

It’s Saturday night and there’s only one thing on my mind. Footy.

Collingwood are playing North Melbourne at the MCG in what is a vital game for both sides. But I don’t support either the Roos or the Pies.

So why am I there? I’m there to watch and focus on one player. Scott Pendlebury.

The classy Collingwood midfielder is a key member of ‘GetTheBoysRoundMe’, an AFL fantasy team coached by yours truly. I need Pendlebury to gather a lot of the ball during the game if I am to have any chance of defeating ‘Seen DS Before’, another fantasy team coached by Stefan, my opponent for the round but also one of my close mates.

Siren sounds and the game is underway. Fans of both sides are going crazy because Collingwood and North Melbourne are going goal-for-goal in the opening few minutes. But I couldn’t care less. All I am concerned about is where Pendlebury is on the field, who his opponent is and where he is most likely to get his next possession.

Suddenly Pendlebury runs hard to find some open space and takes an uncontested mark right in front of me on the wing. He moves the ball on quickly and kicks long looking for Cloke on the half-forward line. Collingwood fans aren’t impressed with the mediocre kick because it did not favour Cloke at all. However I manage a wry smile knowing that he has just earned me six points for my team with his kick and mark.

The rise of online fantasy sport has taken AFL footy fans by storm. Fans who gave up the dream of playing or coaching sport at a professional level now have the opportunity to put themselves in the shoes of someone like Michael Malthouse or Mark Thompson by managing their own team.

Glenn Luff works for Champion Data and is the publisher of the ‘AFL Prospectus’, a 388-page book that has been described as the ‘bible’ of fantasy AFL. Luff says that he isn’t surprised by the popularity of it all.

“Ten years ago, you’d just watch the team that you support,” Luff says. “But now there’s eight games of footy on the TV and you might have a player from each AFL club in your fantasy team that you can follow.”

The whole phenomenon of fantasy sport started with the development of the ‘Rotisserie League Baseball’ back in 1980, where Daniel Okrent came up with the idea that ‘owners’ could draft 23 players from Major League Baseball’s (MLB) rosters and they would have to follow their statistics for the remainder of the season. And the rest, as they say, was history.

So why is fantasy sport so popular with the general public?

Lachlan Carter is a 19 year old Commerce student and is a member of ‘No Passengers’, a private Dream Team sub-forum on the BigFooty website. He says that he purely loves the competition against his mates and is always striving to get better.

“I love the strategic part of fantasy football and I love the competitive nature that comes with it,” Carter says. “A few of the No Passenger boys always strive to make the top 10 or 20 coaches every year, so there’s massive competition there. And there are great prizes too.”

“It’s very similar to poker in that it is a mind game. You have to do research for yourself and figure out your own strategies. But you also have to try and figure out what your opponent is thinking as well.”

Even sports journalists, like Jon Ralph from the Herald Sun, who are supposed to do their job as objectively as they can, find themselves urging on their own players while watching games.

“One of the great things about fantasy sport competitions is that you gain a greater general knowledge of the sport and learn things about teams you don’t support,” Ralph says. “The AFL would be thrilled with the broadened knowledge base of fans from across the country.”

Sam Edmund, another sports journalist from the Herald Sun, says that he enjoys venturing out of the media box occasionally and listening to some of the comments made by fantasy coaches at a match.

“It’s actually far more amusing sitting out in the outer with the average Joe Blow than in the media box,” Edmund says. “You hear them say before, during and after the game that they’ve got this player in their forward line or this player as their captain. You can hear people cursing or even cheering players that are tearing up their team that they support.”

Ben Waterworth is a journalism student at LaTrobe University and a regular contributor to Upstart, the online magazine of Latrobe.