The 2022 AFL season is the 126th season of the

Australian Football League The Australian Football League (AFL) is the only fully professional competition of Australian rules football. Through the AFL Commission, the AFL also serves as the sport's governing body and is responsible for controlling the laws of the gam ...

(AFL), the highest level senior men's

Australian rules football Australian football, also called Australian rules football or Aussie rules, or more simply football or footy, is a contact sport played between two teams of 18 players on an oval field, often a modified cricket ground. Points are scored by k ...

competition in Australia, which was known as the Victorian Football League until 1989. The season features eighteen clubs, is scheduled to run from 16 March until 24 September, and to comprise a 22-game home-and-away season followed by a finals series featuring the top eight clubs.

Impact of COVID-19 pandemic

The 2022 season is being played during the third year of the

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identif ...

. At the start of the season, the roll-out of Australia's vaccination program was almost complete with 95% of adults vaccinated to a two-dose standard and about 50% having received a booster; and across all states except for

Western Australia Western Australia (commonly abbreviated as WA) is a state of Australia occupying the western percent of the land area of Australia excluding external territories. It is bounded by the Indian Ocean to the north and west, the Southern Ocean to th ...

, practically all social and interstate travel restrictions which had been in place through the latter half of 2021 had been lifted; Western Australia maintained some restrictions into the start of the season. Cases of the virus, particularly the omicron variant which became dominant in December 2021, were widespread in the community for the first time in the pandemic; and confirmed cases and their close contacts were still required to

test Test(s), testing, or TEST may refer to: * Test (assessment), an educational assessment intended to measure the respondents' knowledge or other abilities Arts and entertainment * ''Test'' (2013 film), an American film * ''Test'' (2014 film), ...

and isolate, although for shorter periods than earlier in the pandemic. The main impacts of the pandemic to the AFL season were: * The league implemented a Vaccination Policy requiring all players and football department staff to be vaccinated against COVID-19; equivalent requirements were implemented by some state governments. Two players – Liam Jones () and Cam Ellis-Yolmen () – retired as a result of the mandate. * A player top-up list and policy was put in place to cover the event of a substantial portion of a team being forced into isolation. Each club could nominate twenty top-up players from their affiliated state league and reserves systems; those players would become eligible to play if fewer than 28 main list players were available due for COVID-19 reasons, but would not otherwise be contracted to the club.

Pre-season

AFL Community Series

The pre-season series of games returned as the 2022 AAMI Community Series, with teams playing one game each. The games were stand-alone, with no overall winner of the series. All games were televised live on Fox Footy.

Premiership season

and the opened the season in a rematch of the previous season's

grand final Primarily in Australian sports, a grand final (sometimes colloquially abbreviated to "grannie") is a game that decides a sports league's premiership (or championship) winning team, i.e. the conclusive game of a finals (or play-off) series. Sy ...

. Accor Stadium hosted its first premiership match since the 2016 Qualifying Final, with a Sydney Derby between and fixtured for the ground in round one. The remainder of the fixture was released on 9 December, with only the first nine rounds released with dates and times for each match. The remainder of the fixture from round 10 was left as a floating fixture so as to prioritize the best matches for each round in prime-time slots, and dates were released progressively through the year. For the first time since 2001, some Friday nights had two scheduled games, each time to take games away from a less favourable or otherwise occupied timeslot later in the weekend; the broadcast times of the two matches overlapped partially.

Round 1

Round 2

Round 3

Round 4

Round 5

Round 6

Round 7

Round 8

Round 9

Round 10

Round 11

Round 12

Round 13

Round 14

Round 15

Round 16

Round 17

Round 18

Round 19

Round 20

Round 21

Round 22

Round 23

Season notes

* recorded its longest winless start to an AFL season, its record standing at 0–5 after five rounds; its previous worst start had been 0–4.

Win/loss table

Bold – Home game
X – Bye
Opponent for round listed above margin

Ladder

Ladder progression

*Numbers highlighted in green indicates the team finished the round inside the top 8. *Numbers highlighted in blue indicates the team finished in first place on the ladder in that round. *Numbers highlighted in red indicates the team finished in last place on the ladder in that round. *Underlined numbers indicates the team did not play during that round, either due to a bye or a postponed game. *Subscript numbers indicate ladder position at round's end.

Finals series

Week one

Week two

Week three

Week four

Club leadership

References

External links

Official website

Season results
{{Australian Football League Australian Football League seasons A