There will be no midweek AFLW games in 2025 after the much-criticised condensed fixture compounded injury issues last season but the full schedule remains unknown as officials try to work on unifying more games with the men’s competition.
Collingwood and Carlton will open the new season on Thursday 14 August, in 100 days, a date which collides with round 20 of the men’s season.
The floating AFL fixture after round 16 remains a factor in the AFLW planning with General Manager, Emma Moore, declaring double-headers remain part of the “conversation” and have added to the delay.
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But Moore confirmed Thursday’s would be the only matchday outside the traditional Friday, Saturday and Sunday slots after the issues which arose out of multiple games across 10 day periods last season.
“We’re not playing a condensed fixture this year,” she said on Tuesday.
“So while we’re working through the fixture, one of the things that we’re focusing on is optimising what we can do in terms of the crossover between the women’s and the men’s competition and clearly doubleheaders are a part of that conversation and analysis that we’re doing.
“I think another really key part of it is looking at our one club two team culture build and really driving our fans who are currently fans of the men’s competition and driving them to the women’s competition.
“It’s pretty exciting to think that we can really generate that kind of passion out of our club fan base that we have today and make sure that that attention is on the women’s garden as well.”
Moore said they were continually learning about the right placement for the season, with some players advocating an earlier start, in line with the AFL.
“Yeah, I think one of the things when we set this season with the crossover period was really to understand what that implication was, how we could make it really, really work and then from there take those insights and those learnings and look at the season timing,” she said.
“We’re looking at everything in terms of the AFLW growth strategy. Whatever is going to drive the best outcome for the growth of the game. We’ve absolutely got on the table.
“I think one of the key things about the fixture announcement is this (Carlton v Collingwood) is the first of the fixture announcements and we intend to complete the fixture work by the
end of this month and release that so the players and the clubs will know what’s happening when.
“What is really important in the fixture planning and the work that we’re doing is to making sure that we’re optimising that crossover between the men’s and women’s competition and to do that we need to see what’s happening in the men’s fixture which will be released next week for those rounds.”
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