The AFL season starts this week with the “Opening Round” which the AFL tried last year and they’re doing it again. In the ten short years I’ve been actively following the AFL (not counting my years in the 80s when the league was on ESPN 2), things have changed a lot and continue to change. So, what’s new for this year? First, let’s start with how things ended last year. Then, we can focus on what’s happened during the preseason. Finally, we can look ahead to this week.

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The Final AFL Ladder from last year

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The Finals

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AFL Grand Final Highlights

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The AFL Preseason Results

The AFL Preseason Highlights

AFL Opening Round Schedule

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AFL Footy Tipping Contest Last Year’s Results

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Notes and Comments

Tropical Cyclone Alfred has decided to head towards Queensland, so the originally-scheduled games between Brisbane and Geelong (tonight) and between Gold Coast and Essendon (Saturday) have been postponed. The Brisbane-Geelong match will probably be made up during Round 3, when both teams have bye weeks. The Gold Coast-Essendon game will be more difficult to reschedule as they have different bye weeks.

I wouldn’t put too much stock into the preseason results. Like the NFL, different teams take different approaches and there is a lot of experimentation. The good thing is that the preseason has been cut down to just one game. Let’s hope the NFL pays attention…

The Brisbane Lions are your defending champs but the competition is as even as ever. No one team stands out as being dominant. I think this season will be much like last year in that the team that gets hot at the end of the year will win the Premiership.

BFC will be in attendance at Saturday’s GWS match versus Collingwood. That should be a great match to watch as both teams figure to be among the Eight at the end of the season. Other teams that I think will contend are Geelong, Carlton, Port Adelaide, Sydney, and Fremantle.

No major rule changes this year, but the AFL does like to change things around during the season based on how things unfurl. Stay tuned.

Congratulations to Son Of Spam for winning last year’s AFL Tipping Competition! Make sure to join again this year to see if we can dethrone him!

If you are a member of an AFL club or you got a Watch AFL membership, you should be able to watch every AFL and AFLW game, including replays. Game times vary between Australian afternoon and evening, which actually makes it easier for us in North America to watch as the games can be seeing in the evenings on Pacific Time and early mornings on Eastern time.

If you haven’t become a member of a club or signed up for the Watch AFL app, you can still watch the AFL and AFLW games in the USA on either FS1 or FS2 and in Canada on TSN. Showtimes can be found here on the Australian Football Association of North America website. But I do recommend that you join a club. It’s fun and they send you free shit.

See you next week!