2020 AFL season

The 2020 season was disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic, which was formally declared a pandemic by World Health Organization on 11 March 2020, eight days prior to the scheduled start of the premiership season.

• Prior to the commencement of the season, the fixture was shortened from 22 matches per team to no more than 17, under the expectation that matches would be forced to stop at the peak of the disease, or if any player tests positive.[2]
• The season commenced on 19 March as originally scheduled, but the introduction of restrictions (and later of formal quarantines) on interstate travel, resulted in suspension of the season after round one.[3] The season was suspended for more than two months, and resumed on 11 June with tighter quarantine controls. Thereafter, it is intended that positive COVID-19 tests among players will result in individual games being postponed, rather than suspending the entire competition.[4] As of Round 3, this has occurred once.
• Matches were played in empty stadiums for the first time in the league's history, starting in Round 1 and not ending until at least after the government imposed restriction on non-essential public gatherings is lifted.[5] State governments gradually allowed small, restricted sized crowds into games, starting immediately from the resumption in Round 2 in South Australia and New South Wales, from Round 3 in Queensland, and not yet announced in other states.[6]
• Matches were played for a shortened length of 16 minutes plus time on per quarter, instead of 20 minutes plus time on. This was originally done in the unfulfilled hope that more than one round would be played before a suspension of the season, and that playing shorter games could facilitate more frequent games than weekly until that suspension;[7] it was retained after the suspension to lighten the load on players through the season as a result of the compromised training schedule, and to allow make-up games to be more easily scheduled between rounds when matches were postponed due to positive COVID-19 cases among players.[8] As a result of this, it was a low-scoring season, and several records or long-standing marks in low scoring were set during the season.
• St Kilda and Port Adelaide did not play a match at Jiangwan Stadium in Shanghai, China, as scheduled as part of the original Round 11 – this decision being made while the virus was still mostly prevalent within China and prior to its spread in Australia,[9][10][11] but would eventually have been mandated by restrictions on international travel.
• Clubs placed restrictions on spectator access to training sessions or other public areas of club facilities, as well as media and press,[12] and made special arrangements, including seeking charter flights and cordoning off areas of airports or hotels, to protect players from external threats when travelling interstate.[13]
• The starts of the VFL, SANFL, WAFL and NEAFL seasons were suspended due to the greater risk of external threats in the semi-professional state league environment; and AFL listed players were ultimately kept out of the state league systems for the whole year, resulting in there being no formal reserves system for the year.[14] Clubs based in the same state were, however, permitted to arrange ad hoc scratch matches for their unselected players against each other and in empty stadiums to enable some match practice; these could be stand alone games or curtain raisers to senior games.[15]
• The two-test international rules football series against Ireland, planned to have been played in Ireland in November, was cancelled.[16]

When the season was suspended, the league and clubs were faced with an acute cash flow shortage, as the gate and broadcast revenues which had been budgeted for stopped immediately;[17] clubs deriving revenues from gaming and other public venues also saw those revenues drop when public gatherings were restricted.[18] The league and clubs all stood down or severely reduced hours for huge percentages of their staff during the suspension; and the AFL agreed with both the AFLPA and ALFUA to significant play cuts for the players and umpires for the season, amounting to 50% of their wage from the point of the suspension until the end of the season, and increasing to 70% for any period of suspension which extends beyond the end of May.[19][20] The league successfully obtained a $500–600m line of credit with the National Australia Bank and ANZ Bank, leveraged against its ownership of Marvel Stadium, to cover its and its clubs' cash shortfalls during the suspension.[21] The league renegotiated its $417m/yr broadcast deals with Network Seven and Foxtel ahead of the shortened season recommencing, resulting in a total television revenue reduction of approximately $150m over 2020–2022.[22]

During the peak of the hiatus, players were allowed to train only within the strict limits of the government restrictions on public gatherings; at the height of the pandemic in April and May, when gatherings larger than two were restricted, this means players could train only in pairs. Sixteen Adelaide players, as well as assistant coach Ben Hart, were sanctioned for inadvertently breaching these guidelines when training too close to each other on a quarantine camp in early May; Hart was suspended for six weeks and the players each received a suspended sentence of one week.[23]

On 15 May, as most states began easing restrictions, the league's plan to resume the season was announced. Clubs began non-contact training in groups of eight from 18 May, and full contact training from 25 May, ahead of resuming competitive matches from 11 June – either in empty stadiums or in front of small, restricted-sized crowds, depending on the guidelines of the individual state governments. Players, umpires and staff will be regularly tested for the virus, with strict enforceable protocols and monitoring in place to ensure the league does not suffer an outbreak;[4] these protocols, which extended to players' personal lives, were above and beyond the lockdown guidelines still in place for the general public, several players received suspensions for transgressions such as attending non-essential gatherings or riding in Ubers during the season.[24]

The league's plans required approval from the state governments, as the resumption of training and competition required close contact which contravened the states' official social distancing guidelines, and interstate travel contravened quarantine border controls. The necessary exemptions were granted to AFL clubs by the Victorian, New South Wales and Queensland governments; the Western Australian and South Australian government granted exemptions to return to contact training, but not for border controls. As such, the four affected clubs were relocated to the Palm Meadows and Royal Pines golf resorts on the Gold Coast – Adelaide and Port Adelaide shifting there after their Round 2 Showdown in Adelaide, and West Coast and Fremantle shifting before Round 2. All four clubs are expect to remain at the Gold Coast 'hub' for at least the first month after the resumption, and will play their home games at Metricon Stadium. Players' immediate families were permitted to join them at the league's expense, but are subject to the same virus testing regime.[4][25]

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As the coronavirus situation developed, only the first round was played as originally drawn. The rest of the fixture is being redrawn into a new seventeen-round season in which each team plays each other once.[29][30]

The new rescheduled fixture for rounds 2-5 was announced on 25 May.[31]

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