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The 2022 AFL season was the 126th season of the Australian Football League (AFL), the highest-level senior men's Australian rules football competition in Australia, which was known as the Victorian Football League until 1989. The season featured eighteen clubs and ran from 16 March until 24 September, comprising a 22-game home-and-away season followed by a finals series featuring the top eight clubs.

The premiership was won by the Geelong Football Club for the tenth time, after defeating Sydney by 81 points in the 2022 AFL Grand Final.

Background

The 2022 season was played during the third year of the COVID-19 pandemic. 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, 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 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 (Carlton) and Cam Ellis-Yolmen (Brisbane Lions) – resigned as a result of the mandate. The AFL's mandate was lifted in July, on a similar timeline to those of the state governments.
• 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. The Western Australian government's tighter restrictions on isolation for close contacts early in the season meant that state's clubs saw greater COVID-19 impacts, and West Coast was the only club to draw on its top-up list, doing so twice.

Melbourne and the Western Bulldogs opened the season in a rematch of the previous season's grand final. Accor Stadium hosted its first premiership match since the 2016 Qualifying Final, with a Sydney Derby between Greater Western Sydney and Sydney 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, with each double-header to take games away from a less-favourable or an otherwise occupied timeslot later in the weekend; the broadcast times of the two matches overlapped partially.

Club leadership

Pre-season

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.

Home-and-away season

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

Ladder

Progression by round

• 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

Finals week 1

Finals week 2

Finals week 3

Grand final

Win/loss table

Season notes

• Port Adelaide 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.
• Carlton became the first team since 1977 to place in finals standings in every week except for the last round and miss the finals completely.
• Through the home-and-away season, Collingwood won a record eleven games by margins less than two goals; no club had previously won more than eight games by such narrow margins in a year.

Player milestones

Coach changes

Home attendances and membership

The following table excludes finals matches.

Team	Home match attendance						Membership
	Hosted	Total	Highest	Lowest	Average		2021	2022	Change
					2021	2022
Adelaide	11	345,719	39,190	22,859	24,786	31,429	60,232	63,099	2,867
Brisbane Lions	11	284,000	32,312	19,331	20,603	25,818	40,289	43,319	3,030
Carlton	11	547,628	88,287	25,376	29,548	49,784	81,302	88,776	7,474
Collingwood	11	534,306	80,627	25,897	32,444	48,573	82,527	100,384	17,857
Essendon	11	437,289	84,205	20,568	30,294	39,754	81,662	86,001	4,339
Fremantle	11	445,056	53,816	25,284	30,008	40,460	50,342	56,105	5,763
Geelong	11	295,622	59,335	18,091	22,412	26,875	70,293	71,943	1,650
Gold Coast	11	124,276	18,031	5,523	8,437	11,298	19,460	21,422	1,962
Greater Western Sydney	11	101,405	25,572	4,014	7,163	9,219	30,185	32,614	2,429
Hawthorn	11	291,527	48,030	9,022	16,619	26,502	77,079	81,494	4,415
Melbourne	11	431,394	70,956	6,312	27,856	39,218	53,188	66,484	13,296
North Melbourne	11	158,045	32,162	5,072	11,174	14,368	46,357	50,191	3,834
Port Adelaide	11	326,627	50,090	23,058	30,266	29,693	56,532	58,643	2,111
Richmond	11	511,331	70,334	21,757	30,166	46,485	105,084	100,792	4,292
St Kilda	11	279,241	40,129	6,645	19,552	25,386	55,802	60,172	4,370
Sydney	11	323,664	44,659	22,307	23,330	29,424	50,144	55,394	5,250
West Coast	11	404,096	50,117	20,932	41,849	36,736	106,422	102,897	3,525
Western Bulldogs	11	271,205	34,961	6,040	21,016	24,655	46,541	50,941	4,400
Total/overall	198	6,112,431	88,287	4,014	23,751	30,871	1,113,441	1,190,671	77,230

Source: AFL Tables

Awards

Coleman Medal

• Numbers highlighted in blue indicates the player led the Coleman Medal at the end of that round.
• Numbers underlined indicates the player did not play in that round.

Best and fairest

See also

• 2022 AFL Women's season 6
• 2022 AFL Women's season 7
• 2022 Australian football code crowds

References

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