The 2019 AFL season was the 123rd season of the Australian Football League (AFL), the highest level senior men's Australian rules football competition in Australia, which was known as the Victorian Football League until 1989. The season featured eighteen clubs, ran from 21 March until 28 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 Richmond Football Club for the twelfth time, after it defeated by 89 points in the 2019 AFL Grand Final. Rule changes There were several alterations to the laws of the game in 2019: Starting positions were mandated at centre bounces, with each team required to have six players inside each 50m arc – including one in each goal square – four players in the centre square and two along the wings. A team guilty of the 6-6-6 rule, as it became known, received one warning per game, then conceded a free kick on subsequent infractions. At kick-ins after behinds, the full back was no longer required to kick to himself to play on from the goal square, and the man on the mark was positioned 10m from the kick-off line instead of 5m. The spot of any mark or free kick received within nine metres of a player's defensive goal line would be brought back to the nine-metre line, rather than remaining at the spot of the mark or free kick. Team runners were no longer permitted to enter the playing surface except for the break in play after a goal had been kicked; water carriers were also forbidden from entering during live play. The protocol for a 50-metre penalty was amended, allowing the player with the ball to advance to the new mark at his own pace without being interfered with by an opponent (which could be penalised by a second 50-metre penalty), and with the right to play on at any time while the 50m penalty was being measured out. Previously, measuring out a 50m penalty was done with time off. The push-in-the-back rule was relaxed, allowing a player to place his hands on the back of his opponent to protect his position in a marking contest, provided he does not push. This removed the more stringent interpretation added in 2007 which saw a free kick to penalised any use of hands on an opponent's back in a marking