The 2022 AFL Women's season was the sixth season of the

AFL Women's AFL Women's (AFLW) is Australia's national semi-professional Australian rules football in Australia, Australian rules football league for women's Australian rules football, female players. The 2017 AFL Women's season, first season of the league ...

competition, the highest-level senior

women's A woman is an adult female human. Prior to adulthood, a female human is referred to as a girl (a female child or adolescent). The plural ''women'' is sometimes used in certain phrases such as "women's rights" to denote female humans regardl ...

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. The season was the last to feature 14 clubs, ran from 7 January until 9 April 2022, and comprised a ten-game home-and-away season, followed by a finals series featuring the top six clubs. It was the first of two seasons to take place in the 2022 calendar year, with the competition's seventh season held from August to November. won their third AFL Women's premiership, defeating by 13 points in the 2022 AFL Women's Grand Final, played at

Adelaide Oval Adelaide Oval is a sports ground in Adelaide, South Australia, located in the parklands between the city centre and North Adelaide. The venue is predominantly used for cricket and Australian rules football, but has also played host to rugby le ...

Format

The season was formatted mostly the same as the previous season, with each of the fourteen clubs ranked on a single ladder and the top six teams qualifying for the three-week, single-elimination finals series. The only change was extension of the home-and-away season by an additional round, allowing each team to play 10 matches. The season was originally planned to start in December 2021, but in August 2021 it was decided to delay this to January 2022 in the hope of minimising

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 ...

interruptions. This was the last season to be contested by 14 teams, with the four remaining AFL clubs (, , and ) joining the AFLW competition in 2023.

Impact of COVID-19 pandemic

Brisbane Lions vs Collingwood (AFLW), Round 5, 2022

The 2022 season was played during the third year of the

. At the start of the season, the roll-out of Australia's original two-dose vaccination program was almost complete with more than 90% uptake. 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 ...

, most social and interstate travel restrictions which had been in place through the latter half of 2021 had been lifted; cases of the virus, particularly the

omicron variant Omicron (B.1.1.529) is a variant of SARS-CoV-2 first reported to the World Health Organization (WHO) by the Network for Genomics Surveillance in South Africa on 24 November 2021. It was first detected in Botswana and has spread to become the ...

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. In contrast, Western Australia opened the season with very few virus cases in its community, and with its state borders closed to the rest of Australia, with a planned full reopening date of 5 February 2022 which was later changed to a restricted reopening, with the full reopening indefinitely delayed. The main impacts of the pandemic to the AFLW 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. * and , following a Round 1

Western Derby The Western Derby () is the name given to the Australian rules football match between the West Coast Eagles and the Fremantle Dockers, who both participate in the Australian Football League (AFL). As both teams are based in Perth, the capit ...

in Fremantle, travelled to Victoria and were based there until the Western Australian borders had their restricted opening. Late season matches were brought forward into this window to try to minimize the impact of the border restrictions, while the league received permission for teams to travel into Western Australia for matches after the opening. * A match Rescheduling Policy was put in place to allow for a match to be rescheduled, redrawn or cancelled if one of its clubs was unable to field at least 21 players – including at least 16 from its primary list with five train-on players – due to absences from the team.

Premiership season

* All starting times are

local time Local time is the time observed in a specific locality. There is no canonical definition. Originally it was mean solar time, but since the introduction of time zones it is generally the time as determined by the time zone in effect, with daylight s ...

. * Source for results and attendances
here

Round 1

Round 2

Round 3

Round 4

Round 5

Round 6

Round 7

Round 8

Round 9

Round 10

Ladder

Win/loss table

Bold – Home game
Opponent for round listed above margin
This table can be sorted by each team's aggregate winning/losing margin in any given round.

Finals series

Qualifying finals

Preliminary finals

Grand Final

Awards

League awards

*The league best and fairest was awarded to

Emily Bates Emily Bates (born 18 October 1995) is an Australian rules footballer with the Hawthorn Football Club in the AFL Women's (AFLW). She previously played for the Brisbane Lions from 2017 to season seven. Bates was selected by the in the inaugura ...

of the

Brisbane Lions The Brisbane Lions is a professional Australian rules football club based in Brisbane, Queensland, that plays in the Australian Football League (AFL). The club was formed in late 1996 via a merger of the Melbourne-based 1883 foundation VFL c ...

, who polled 21 votes. *The leading goalkicker was awarded to Ashleigh Woodland of , who kicked 19 goals during the home and away season. *The Rising Star was awarded to

Mimi Hill Mimi Hill (born 4 October 2002) is an Australian rules footballer playing for in the AFL Women's (AFLW). She was drafted with the twelfth selection in the 2020 AFL Women's draft by the . Early life Hill played junior football for the Kew Com ...

of . *The best on ground medal in the AFL Women's Grand Final was won by

Anne Hatchard Anne Hatchard is an Australian rules footballer playing for the Adelaide Football Club in the AFL Women's competition. AFL Women's career Hatchard was drafted by Adelaide with their eleventh selection and eighty-seventh overall in the 2016 A ...

of . *The goal of the year was awarded to

Ebony Antonio Ebony Antonio (born 18 December 1991) is an Australian rules footballer playing for the Fremantle Football Club in the AFL Women's (AFLW). Antonio represented The Allies in the inaugural AFL Women's State of Origin match in 2017, and won AFL ...

of . *The mark of the year was awarded to

Tahlia Randall Tahlia Randall (born 29 May 1998) is an Australian rules footballer playing for the North Melbourne Football Club in the AFL Women's (AFLW). Randall previously played for the Brisbane Lions from 2017 to 2018, where she received a nomination f ...

of . * AFLW Players Association awards: **The most valuable player was awarded to

of the

. **The most courageous player was awarded to

Kirsty Lamb Kirsty Maree Lamb (born 27 June 1994) is an Australian rules footballer playing for the in the AFL Women's (AFLW) competition. Lamb previously played cricket for Victoria in the Women's National Cricket League (WNCL) and for the Melbourne Ren ...

of the . **The best captain was awarded to

Daisy Pearce Daisy Pearce (born 27 May 1988) is an Australian rules footballer playing for the Melbourne Football Club in the AFL Women's (AFLW) competition. Often regarded as the face of women's Australian rules football, Pearce has served as Melbourne c ...

of . **The best first year player was awarded to

Charlie Rowbottom Charlie Rowbottom (born 22 January 2003) is an Australian rules footballer playing for Gold Coast in the AFL Women's (AFLW). Early life Rowbottom grew up in Melbourne and first played Australian rules football in year eight at Loreto Mandevi ...

of . *The AFLW Coaches Association awards: ** The champion player of the year was awarded to

of the

. ** The senior coach of the year was awarded to Mick Stinear of . * Emma Kearney was named captain of the

All-Australian team The All-Australian team is an all-star team of Australian rules football in Australia, Australian rules footballers, selected by a panel at the end of each season. It represents a complete team, including an interchange bench, of the best-perf ...

. Nine of the fourteen clubs had at least one representative in the 21-woman team. *The minor premiership was won by . *The

wooden spoon Wooden Spoon may refer to: * Wooden spoon, implement * Wooden spoon (award) A wooden spoon is an award that is given to an individual or team that has come last in a competition. Examples range from the academic to sporting and more frivolous e ...

was "won" by .

Best and fairests

Leading goalkickers

*Numbers highlighted in blue indicates the player led the season's goal kicking tally at the end of that round. *Numbers underlined indicates the player did not play in that round. Source:

Coach changes

Club leadership

References

External links

Official AFL Women's website
{{AFL Women's 2022 AFL Women's season AFL Women's seasons AFL Women's season