Fantasy Football: Join the Champion J-League on JOE

Fantasy Football is back! And more importantly, the Champion J-League is back, in bigger and better form than its inaugural campaign.

By Conor Heneghan

(Fantasy Football in association with Champion)

With no international tournament to entertain us and the weather even more miserable than usual, this summer has seemed even longer in the absence of top class football, with only terribly drawn out transfer sagas and turgid pre-season friendlies to entertain us.

Thank God, then, for the return of the Premier League season this weekend. Hand in hand with that, of course, is the return of Fantasy Football and you can get in on the action on JOE by joining our ultra-competitive Champion J-League, set up on the most popular fantasy football format around, fantasy.premierleague.com.

Over 130 of you joined our league last season and the title was claimed at the death by Stephen Fox’s Makin Up D Numbers, who pipped Shane Halligan’s long-time leaders Hal’s All-Stars with a couple of weeks to go and held their nerve to top the charts.

For his Special One-like expertise, Stephen won four tickets to a Premier League game of choice this season, complete with flights and accommodation, while Shane had earlier annexed the prize of two tickets, flights and accommodation for ruling the roost at the halfway stage. There were also monthly prizes of replica Premier League shirts, and with the good folk at Champion once again involved there will be brilliant prizes available throughout the Champion J-League season.

Incidentally, both Stephen and Shane were Arsenal fans, although we’re sure that was a mere coincidence as opposed to a possible suggestion that Gooners are more knowledgeable when it comes to football than the rest of us.

If you're not in, you can't win

Last season, some crafty feckers got a hold of the code to the league without sending us their e-mail addresses and although you can chance your arm doing that again this season, you will NOT be eligible for any of those great prizes.

Unfortunately, that also means that everybody who registered for the league last year, will have to send us on a mail again, but it will only take a couple of seconds and all will be hunky dory once again.

All it takes is a quick e-mail with ‘Fantasy Football’ in the subject line to fantasyfootball@joe.ie, and we’ll send you on the code to register. Simple.

As with last year, there will be plenty of fantasy football related content to help your weekly team selection that bit easier and save you from tearing your hair out on a Friday night, or setting your alarm specifically on a Saturday morning to change your team on time (Or is that just me?)

Every Tuesday, Fantasy Football Review will round up the action and inform readers of how they fared and whether they’re in contention for the precious prizes, while on Fridays Fantasy Football Insider will give you the best tips on who to get in, who to turf out and who to give the captain’s armband to.

We will be sharing the articles via our Facebook and Twitter accounts and also in the Champion J-League forum on fantasy.premierleague.com, so feel free to get a bit of banter going. As long as it’s good-natured and all above board, of course.

Beat the, eh, experts

Last year, the decision to share management duties amongst the JOE editorial team didn’t quite work out, so this year we’ve decided to go it alone. Every member of the editorial team will be entering their team in the league, so you can applaud or point and laugh as you see fit, although unlike you lucky suckers, we won’t be eligible for prizes and will have to satisfy ourselves with some good old-fashioned office one-upmanship.

Plus, it will also prevent some members of the editorial team (cough, William Nestor, cough) from neglecting management duties amid claims of lack of interest, as happened pretty early on in the league last year.

If you haven’t picked your team yet, get on it now at fantasy.premierleague.com and pop us a quick e-mail afterwards (that address again is fantasyfootball@joe.ie) to ensure your participation in the Champion J-League.

Closing date for entries is Saturday, 13 August at 2.45pm.

Let the games begin.