Dummies guide to Dream Team Fantasy NRL

Cameron Smith is a great captain option in NRL Fantasy Dream Team. Photo / Getty Images

Dream Team Fantasy NRL is simple. Register at dreamteam.co.nz, come up with a name for your team and you will receive a fantasy budget to create your own Fantasy NRL team consisting of players from the real-life NRL squads.

Each NRL player is assigned a dollar value based on their past ability to score fantasy points. Your challenge is to build a squad that combines present super stars and up-and-coming players to form the ultimate fantasy team.

Your Fantasy team will then receive fantasy points for the real-life performances of your selected players. Fantasy points will be awarded to players for things like the number of tackles made, tries scored and offloads. Players will also lose fantasy points for getting sin-binned and missing tackles.

Your fantasy team will automatically be competing with all other registered teams for the overall Dream Team NRL title but you can also form private group competitions with friends and workmates.

Best of all, there are great cash prizes up for grabs - $9500 in total with a $5000 first place prize.

Here are a few tips on managing your team to help increase your chances of a successful season.

1. Stars and sleepers
Your Fantasy NRL squad should be selected with two goals in mind - to take advantage of established Fantasy stars as well as predict those up-and-comers who will gain in value as the season progresses. After Round 1 is complete, player values will fluctuate to reflect a player's on-field performances, so undervalued players are worth their weight in gold in the game.

2. Captain Fantastic
Your captain should be the first man you pick in your squad - he will receive double points every week and, in effect, is twice as valuable and important as any other player on your team. Last year's MVPs were lead by the Melbourne Storm's Cameron Smith and it's hard to look past him again for 2014. Others to consider include Corey Parker, Sam Burgess, Andrew Fifita, Matt Ballin, Robbie Farah and Issac Luke.

3. Plan your transfers
You can only make up to four transfers for each of the 26 regular-season rounds. These transfers must take into account player injury, poor form and, most importantly, bye rounds and State of Origin duties. If you're going to win this competition you must be planning your transfers at least two rounds ahead of time.

4. Last minute check
Players get injured in training, get cited for on and off field activity or are put on the bench or dropped for a plethora of reasons. Most NRL teams are announced each week on a Tuesday and injury and suspensions are widely reported throughout the week. It always pays to review team lists and the latest news each Thursday before making any transfers.

NRL Tipping
If Fantasy NRL doesn't sound like your cup of tea, we are still running our hugely popular NRL Tipping game in which you simply have to pick the correct result and margin of each NRL game.

By signing up you get to take on the expert knowledge of a range of personalities such as Monty Betham, Richie Barnett, Henry Fa'afili and D'Arcy Waldegrave.

Best of all, we're giving away cash prizes each week, totalling over $2000 for the season.