2020 AFL Women's season
Overview
Date	7 February – 22 March 2020
Teams	14
Premiers	Not awarded
Best and fairest	Maddy Prespakis (Carlton) 15 votes
Leading goalkicker	Caitlin Greiser (St Kilda) 10 goals
Attendance
Matches played	46
Total attendance	205,050 (4,458 per match)
Highest	35,185 (round 2,West Coast vFremantle)
← 2019 2021 →

The2020 AFL Women's season was the fourth season of theAFL Women's (AFLW) competition, the highest-level seniorwomen's Australian rules football competition in Australia. The season featured 14 clubs and ran from 7 February to 22 March; it was intended to comprise an eight-round home-and-away season followed by a three-week finals series featuring the top three clubs from each conference, however the onset of theCOVID-19 pandemic in March saw the season curtailed and finally abandoned without apremiership being awarded.Australian Football League (AFL) clubsGold Coast,Richmond,St Kilda andWest Coast featured for the first time in 2020.

Carlton'sMaddy Prespakis won theAFL Women's best and fairest award as the league's best and fairest player, and St Kilda'sCaitlin Greiser won theAFL Women's leading goalkicker award as the league's leading goalkicker.

Four new teams,Gold Coast,Richmond,St Kilda andWest Coast, joined the competition, bringing the total number of teams to fourteen. This followed on from the inclusion ofGeelong andNorth Melbourne in theprevious season.^[1]

Prior to the season commencing acollective bargaining agreement failed to pass the player's association, with only 70% agreeing, falling short of the required 75% threshold. One of the demands of the dissenters was to have a longer season, so that all the teams could play each other once.^[2] The players later voted with a vote of 98% to agree to a revised agreement, which steadily increased the number of matches to be played over three years.^[3]

The conference system utilised in the previous season was retained for this season, though it was expanded to cater for the additional teams. Seven teams were placed in each of the two conferences, with teams playing all their intra-conference rivals once and two cross-over matches against teams from the other conference, resulting in an 8-round home and away season. The placing of the teams was determined by the AFL with competitiveness, list assessments and the previous season's results in mind.^[4]

The 2020 season was disrupted and then brought to an early end by theCOVID-19 pandemic, which was formally declared a pandemic on 11 March 2020, prior to Round 6. The pandemic had the following effects on the season:

• All matches played from 14 March onwards were played to empty stadiums.^[5]
• The final two rounds of the home-and-away season were scratched and the finals brought forward by two weeks, being played based on ladder positions at the time.^[6]
• The finals series was expanded from six teams to eight. Under the original schedule, the top team in each conference was to advance directly to the preliminary finals while the second and third placed teams played off in semi-finals; but under the modified system, the fourth placed teams also qualified, and faced the first placed teams in semi-finals.^[6] Partway through the finals series, it was announced that no premiership will be awarded after the Victorian government announced a shutdown of all non-essential operations on 22 March 2020.^[7]

The originally scheduled eight-round fixture and make-up of the conferences was released on 29 October 2019.^[8]

• All starting times are Australian Eastern Time.^[8]
• Richmond home games originally scheduled at theSwinburne Centre, the club's home ground, were later moved toIkon Park out of concerns for crowd capacity.^[9]

• Numbers highlighted in green indicates the team finished the round inside the top 3.
• Numbers highlighted in blue indicates the team finished in first place in the conference for that round.
• Numbers highlighted in red indicates the team finished in last place in the conference for that round.

• The leaguebest and fairest was awarded toMaddy Prespakis ofCarlton, who polled 15 out of 18 votes.^[13]
• Theleading goalkicker was awarded toCaitlin Greiser ofSt Kilda, who kicked ten goals during the home and away season.
• TheRising Star was awarded toIsabel Huntington of theWestern Bulldogs.^[14]
• There was no Grand Final best on ground medal awarded, as the match was not played on account of the season's early termination due to the coronavirus pandemic.
• The goal of the year was awarded toKate Hore ofMelbourne.^[15]
• The mark of the year was awarded toRebecca Privitelli ofGreater Western Sydney.^[15]
• AFLW Players Association awards
  • Themost valuable player was awarded toJasmine Garner (North Melbourne).^[16]
  • The most courageous player was awarded toKiara Bowers (Fremantle).^[16]
  • The best captain was awarded toDaisy Pearce (Melbourne).^[16]
  • The best first year player was awarded toGeorgia Patrikios (St Kilda).^[16]
• TheAFLW Coaches Association champion player of the year was awarded toJasmine Garner (North Melbourne).^[17]
• Karen Paxman was named captain of theAll-Australian team. Twelve of the fourteen clubs had at least one representative in the 21-woman team.^[18]
• Richmond were the lowest ranked team overall, and thus could be said to have "won" thewooden spoon, though this is a contestable claim given the use of conferences.

• Numbers highlighted in blue indicates the player led the season's goal kicking tally at the end of that round. The total is updated following the conclusion of the round.

Source^[20]

• 2019 AFL Women's draft

• Official AFL Women's website

• 2020 AFL Women's season
• AFL Women's seasons
• 2020 in Australian rules football
• Sports events curtailed and voided due to the COVID-19 pandemic

• Articles with short description
• Short description is different from Wikidata
• Use Australian English from December 2016
• All Wikipedia articles written in Australian English
• Use dmy dates from December 2016
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