Position tiers explained
Why the 3rd-best hooker and the 3rd-best middle are worth wildly different amounts.
Comparing NRL Fantasy players by raw average is misleading, because the positions don't score at the same rate. Position tiers fix that by grouping players against the others available at their position, so you can see where the genuine drop-offs sit — and therefore where your money is actually buying something.
The idea: gaps, not rankings
A ranked list tells you who is 4th and who is 5th. It doesn't tell you whether that's a meaningful difference. Tiers answer the more useful question: which players are close enough to be near-interchangeable, and where does the list fall off a cliff?
Players at each position are ordered by projected points, then walked from best to worst. A new tier starts when a player's projection falls more than a small margin below the top of the current tier, or when a tier gets too large to be meaningful. Players projected identically are never split across a boundary.
The practical payoff: if six players sit in the same tier, take the cheapest one. You are paying for a difference the projections say isn't really there. But if the next player down is in a lower tier, that gap is real, and it's worth spending to stay above it.
Fantasy positions aren't NRL positions
NRL Fantasy groups players into fantasy positions that combine several on-field roles. On yafss you'll see them as hooker, halves, middles, edges, centres and wing/fullback. Players eligible in two positions appear in both lists, which is worth knowing when you're assessing depth — a dual-position player gives you flexibility that a single-position player of equal projection does not.
Scarcity: why the same score is worth more at some positions
Here's the part that most people miss. You are never choosing between a player and nothing — you're choosing between a player and the next-best player you could realistically field in that slot. That baseline is called replacement level, and it differs sharply by position.
yafss measures a player's real worth as their projection minus the projection of a freely-available starter at their position. Positions where you must field several players run out of quality faster, so their replacement level sits lower — which makes a standout there worth more than an identical score at a position you only need one of.
This is why the site's "must-have" list isn't simply the highest projected scorers. A player is ranked by how far clear of their positional replacement they are, which is the number that actually predicts how much they improve your team.
Using tiers to structure a squad
- Buy the cheapest player in a tier. Within a tier, projections say the players are close. Paying up for the top name in a tier is usually money wasted.
- Spend to cross a tier boundary, not to move within one. This is also the cleanest test for an upgrade trade: if it doesn't change tier, it probably isn't worth a trade.
- Prioritise thin positions. Where the top tier is small and the fall-off steep, owning one of the few genuinely good options is a durable edge. Where the position is deep, you can wait and take value later.
- Note the tier of your cheap players. A cash cow several tiers below replacement is costing you real points every week, which is fine early and expensive late.
What tiers don't tell you
Tiers are built from projections, so they inherit the projections' blind spots. They won't know about a role change announced yesterday, and they don't account for price, ownership or bye coverage. A tier list tells you who's good; it doesn't tell you who's affordable or who fits your structure.
Read them alongside the rest:
Player Finder — add price and breakeven filters Ownership — spot under-owned top-tier players Team Lists — confirm the role is intact
Used that way, tiers become the frame you hang every other decision on: they tell you which slots deserve your money, and the other tools tell you exactly which player to put in them.