The 2012 AFL season was the 116th season of the Australian Football League (AFL), the highest level senior Australian rules football competition in Australia, which was known as the Victorian Football League until 1989. The season featured eighteen clubs, with addition of the newly established Greater Western Sydney Giants, which was based in Western Sydney and split its home games between Sydney and Canberra. The season ran from 24 March until 29 September, and comprised a 22-game home-and-away season followed by a finals series featuring the top eight clubs. The premiership was won by the Sydney Swans for the fifth time, after it defeated by ten points in the 2012 AFL Grand Final. Pre-season Draft The 2011 National Draft was held on 24 November in Sydney, making it only the second time it was held out of Melbourne. This is due to the entry of . NAB Cup Adelaide won the 2012 pre-season competition following a 34-point win over the West Coast Eagles at AAMI Stadium. It was their second pre-season cup premiership. Premiership season The fixture for this season was officially announced on 28 October 2011. Some of the features of the fixture included: Each team played twenty-two matches over twenty-three rounds. Each team had one bye, located between rounds 11 and 13. This is similar in practice to the split round concept, which (prior to 2011) saw one of the mid-season rounds played over two weeks, giving each team one week off. Due to concern over one-sided matches featuring the two newest teams ( and ), their fixtures were adjusted so that they played each of the top five teams from 2011 only once. For the first time, each Victorian team travelled interstate at least five times, and each team travelled to Perth at least once. Blundstone Arena, Blacktown International Sportspark and Škoda Stadium hosted home and away matches for the first time in 2012. As had been the case since 2010, the final round of matches was given a floating fixture. Exact dates were determined later in the season with a view to giving likely finalists the longest possible break ahead of their first final. The addition of a ninth match in each round, and the new television rights deal requiring most matches to be shown live, influenced the scheduling of matches, and changed some traditional match starting times. In typical rounds, where nine matches were played