How to track rival trades in AFL Fantasy and SuperCoach
A rival trade history is built from snapshots. Record each team after lockout, compare the squad with its previous round, and the names that disappeared and arrived are the net changes. You need two different recorded rounds, and the comparison cannot recover moves made and reversed between them.
How to build a SuperCoach or AFL Fantasy trade history
- Save the baseline. After the relevant players have locked and squads are visible, record every team in the same league.
- Repeat next round. Capture that league again at a comparable point. Two uploads of the same round do not create two round snapshots.
- Compare whole squads. Names missing from the later squad are departures; new names are arrivals. On-field and bench swaps are not trades.
- Check the coverage. Read the round labels before treating a change as this week's move. A comparison across a missed round covers a longer period.
In Fantasy League Lens, set up the Capture league bookmark, load your first file, then load the following round and open Trades. Choose the same league each time; keep separate leagues separate.
What a trade history actually records
A completed fantasy trade changes the set of players in a squad. If one name is present in your Round 6 snapshot and absent in Round 7, that player went out. A new name appearing in the same comparison came in. Repeat the comparison for every team and you have the league's trade history for that round.
This is a record of net roster changes, not a replay of every tap made in the trade screen. A coach might reverse three ideas before settling on one move. None of the abandoned versions matters once lockout has passed, and a snapshot cannot see them anyway.
A worked example. Say a rival's Round 8 squad contains 29 players. In Round 9, 27 names are unchanged, two have gone and two new players have arrived. The defensible conclusion is two net trades. The snapshots do not prove which outgoing player funded which incoming player, so a good tracker does not invent the pairing.
A two-round example: arrivals are not exact pairings
In this invented example, the rest of a rival's squad stays unchanged:
| Player | Round 8 | Round 9 | Recorded change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Player A | Owned | Absent | Departure |
| Player B | Owned | Absent | Departure |
| Player C | Absent | Owned | Arrival |
| Player D | Absent | Owned | Arrival |
You can report A and B out, C and D in. You cannot prove that A was traded directly for C, that B funded D, or which button the coach pressed first. If A left and returned between these observations, that temporary move would be invisible.
Why the first round is only a baseline
One roster tells you what a rival owns now. It says nothing about how they got there. Trade history begins with the second capture because there must be an earlier squad to compare.
Starting late is still worthwhile. Your first capture becomes the baseline and every later move can be tracked from there. What you cannot reconstruct honestly is the unrecorded part of the season. A tool that claims otherwise is either using a separate historical source or guessing.
Capture after the changes are visible
The useful snapshot is the roster that survives lockout. During a rolling lockout, parts of a rival team may still be hidden or changeable. AFL Fantasy's support article, last updated in July 2025 and now labelled as an older help centre, says a rival's traded-in player becomes visible only after both the incoming and outgoing players have locked. That is why a mid-round glance can give you an incomplete answer. See AFL Fantasy's published lockout explanation.
Pick a consistent point after lockout and record the whole league then. Consistency matters more than the exact hour. If one week's snapshot is taken while teams are still changing and the next is taken after the round, the comparison mixes two different states.
What happens when you miss a round
A gap does not make the next comparison useless. It changes what you can claim. If your last snapshot was Round 7 and the next is Round 9, you can report the net changes across that span. You cannot assign each move to Round 8 or Round 9, recover the order, or detect a player who was sold and bought back between the two snapshots.
Good trade history is comfortable leaving that uncertainty visible. It is better to show "changed since Round 7" than turn a missing observation into a precise but fictional timeline.
The rival patterns worth watching
A list of names is useful, but the repeated choices are where it starts helping with decisions. These are the patterns worth checking across several rounds:
- Closing a shared gap. Several rivals bring in the same high-owned scorer you still lack.
- Creating a new league POD. One coach buys a player nobody else in the league owns.
- Rookie timing. A rival moves a cash generator on early, holds through another rise, or arrives after the cheap price has gone.
- Churn. A player is sold, then bought back after an injury, suspension or poor run has passed. That can be sensible, although the round trip costs trades.
- Repeated team repair. The same line is changed again and again while another part of the squad is left alone.
The trade itself does not reveal motive. An injury, a bye, price movement or a fixture may explain it, but those are interpretations that need supporting information. Start with the change you can prove, then look for the reason.
League trades and popular trades are different questions
Competition-wide trade lists tell you what thousands of coaches are doing. Your private-league history tells you what the people affecting your ladder are doing. A heavily traded-in player may still be absent from your league. A move that barely registers globally can change several of your remaining matchups if the right rival makes it.
This is the same distinction that matters for ownership. Public popularity is useful context, but your league decides whether a player is shared, a gap or a real point of difference.
What roster comparison cannot see
Squad membership is only one layer of a fantasy team. Moving a player from the bench to the field, switching positions, changing an emergency or choosing a new captain can affect the score without creating a trade. Those actions should not be added to a trade count.
Multiple changes also need care. If three players leave and three arrive, the snapshots prove six roster changes and three net trades. They do not prove three exact out-to-in pairings. The coach may have used dual-position moves or a chain of price changes that makes several pairings possible.
How Fantasy League Lens keeps the record
Fantasy League Lens captures the rosters visible in a league after lockout and stores each round as a separate snapshot. When you load the next round, the analysis engine compares each team with its previous recorded squad. Departures and arrivals become that team's trade entry. Nothing is filled in for rounds you did not capture.
The full rival trade history is part of the free tier. The capture runs in your signed-in browser session and never asks for your fantasy competition login details. Your results are not posted to the league or combined with other users' captures.
First capture sets the baseline · No credit card · Nothing shared with your league
Try a recorded change before capturing your own league
Open the SuperCoach working example and choose Recorded squad changes. Compare that record with the proposed moves in Trade planner: one describes a change between sample snapshots, the other tests a possible future trade.
The AFL Fantasy example shows ranked and head-to-head planning, while the AFLW Fantasy example demonstrates a multi-trade plan. All use clearly labelled sample data.
Rival trade history questions
Can I see a rival's trades before lockout?
Not reliably. A trade can remain hidden or be reversed while the relevant players are unlocked. A completed-round snapshot records the roster that survived lockout, which is the version worth keeping.
How many captures do I need before trade history appears?
Two. The first capture is the baseline. The next capture can be compared with it to show which players left and arrived for every team recorded in both rounds.
What happens if I miss a round?
The next capture still shows the net roster change since your previous one, but it cannot tell you which move happened in which missed round or reveal a player who was traded out and back in between snapshots.
Does moving a player on field or changing captain count as a trade?
No. Trade history compares squad membership. Bench moves, position switches, emergency changes and captain choices can alter a lineup without changing the players in the squad.
Does this work for fantasy draft leagues?
No. This guide and Fantasy League Lens cover the salary-cap Classic formats. A draft league has player-to-player deals, waivers and unique ownership, so its transaction history needs a different model.