Thursday night fixture in the AFL was scheduled. Premiership season The season was played during the second year of the COVID-19 pandemic. As the season began, Australia had largely settled into a paradigm of most states maintaining zero COVID-19 cases outside of their international travel quarantine systems; this allowed football games to be played in front of crowds, usually with reduced capacity, and unhindered interstate travel was permitted without quarantine. However, the different state governments often responded quickly to small numbers or even single virus cases being discovered in the community; this meant border restrictions or quarantine periods were at times re-introduced at short notice, impacting interstate travel for games; and, in some cases, that city- or state-wide lockdowns could be imposed within the impacted states, precluding football activities altogether. The season's original fixture was set with each team playing 16 games over 19 rounds, with three byes per team designed to give the league some flexibility to accommodate cancelled and postponed games later in the season - followed by a four-week finals series played under the AFL final eight system which it had used since 2000. However, this was progressively reduced after lockdowns saw the cancellation of more games than could be made up. Lockdowns ultimately saw the cancellation of Victorian matches across a total of eight home and away rounds, with lockdowns in Queensland also impacting some matches there. The Victorian lockdown which commenced on 6 August ultimately saw the season abandoned. Like the lockdowns which preceded it, it was originally expected to last for only one week. After two rounds were lost, it became impossible to for teams to play an equal number of home-and-away matches, each team ultimately playing between nine and eleven games each, resulting in the ladder being decided on match ratio for the first time since 1893. When the first round of the finals was lost, the finals were reduced to a simple eight-team knock-out tournament, with contingency to reduce further to a simple four-team knock-out tournament. But, following the extension of the lockdown into October, the league formally announced on 1 September that the season was abandoned and no premiership would be awarded. The Footscray reserves team, which was unbeaten from ten home-and-away games, was recognised as minor premier. Round 1 Round 2 Round 3 Round 4 Round 5 Round 6 Round 7 Round 8 Round 9 Round 10 Round 11 Round