2012 AFL Fixture to be released October 28

Looking ahead to next season, our attention can turn towards the fixture. There are no byes for us to have to think about week to week (touch wood), but there will be a few ‘partial lockouts’ that we might need to have our heads around.

The first round of AFL for 2012 is likely to be played over two weekends. This is due to Greater Western Sydney taking on Sydney in a stand alone game the weekend before the other 8 matches (yes, there are 9 in total next year with 18 teams in the competiton).

What does this mean for AFL Dream Team?

We will have a partial lockout where we will have to have our Swans and Giants players locked in before their game, while we are still able to edit the rest of our team. This will be very interesting for selecting our rookies – especially as DT will be back to 2 on the bench in each position and picking the right rookies will be more important again.

But wait… there’s more!

The second game is going to be the Thursday night battle between Richmond and Carlton. This (almost) traditional fixture brought us the Partial Lockout the last couple of seasons so we were able to see the teams on Thursday night and have all Friday to finish our teams off after locking in our Tigers and Blues. So next season, we could potentially have an extended partial lockout which we will lock in the Giants and Swans on the prior weekend, then the Tigers and Blues on the Thursday night and then full lockout on Friday.

We will learn more from Virtual Sports as the fixture is finalised.