2020 AFL Women's season

The 2020 AFL Women's season was the fourth season of the AFL Women's competition, the highest-level senior women'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 the COVID-19 pandemic in March saw the season curtailed and finally abandoned without a premiership being awarded. Australian Football League clubs,, and featured for the first time in 2020.
's Maddy Prespakis won the AFL Women's best and fairest award as the league's best and fairest player, and St Kilda's Caitlin Greiser won the AFL Women's leading goalkicker award as the league's leading goalkicker.

Background

New teams

Four new teams,,, and, joined the competition, bringing the total number of teams to fourteen. This followed on from the inclusion of and in the previous season.

Collective bargaining agreement

Prior to the season commencing a collective 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. 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.

Conference system

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.

Impact of 2019–20 coronavirus pandemic

The 2020 season was disrupted and then brought to an early end by the COVID-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.
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.
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. 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.

Home-and-away season

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

All starting times are Australian Eastern Time.
home games originally scheduled at the Swinburne Centre, the club's home ground, were later moved to Ikon Park out of concerns for crowd capacity.

Ladders

Progression by round

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.

	Team	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8
1								x	x
2								x	x
3								x	x
4								x	x
5								x	x
6								x	x
7								x	x

	Team	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8
1								x	x
2								x	x
3								x	x
4								x	x
5								x	x
6								x	x
7								x	x

Win–loss table

Team

Ladder

GCS

Rich

Brisbane Lions

Rich

WCE

Frem

StK

Geel

Melb

Carl

Melb

GWS

Coll

Gold Coast

Adel

Melb

Geel

Frem

GCS

Frem

Carl

Adel

Coll

WCE

West Coast

Carl

StK

GWS

Awards

League awards

The league best and fairest was awarded to Maddy Prespakis of, who polled 15 out of 18 votes.
The leading goalkicker was awarded to Caitlin Greiser of, who kicked ten goals during the home and away season.
The Rising Star was awarded to Isabel Huntington of the.
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 to Kate Hore of.
The mark of the year was awarded to Rebecca Privitelli of.
AFLW Players Association awards
*The most valuable player was awarded to Jasmine Garner.
*The most courageous player was awarded to Kiara Bowers.
*The best captain was awarded to Daisy Pearce.
*The best first year player was awarded to Georgia Patrikios.
The AFLW Coaches Association champion player of the year was awarded to Jasmine Garner.
Karen Paxman was named captain of the All-Australian team. Twelve of the fourteen clubs had at least one representative in the 21-woman team.
were the lowest ranked team overall, and thus could be said to have "won" the wooden spoon, though this is a contestable claim given the use of conferences.

AFLW leading goalkicker

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.

Rank	Player	Team	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	Total
1	Caitlin Greiser	St Kilda	0₀	2₂	2₄	1₅	2₇	3₁₀	x	x	10
2	Sabreena Duffy	Fremantle	4₄	1₅	0₅	0₅	4₉	0₉	x	x	9
2	Kalinda Howarth	Gold Coast	0₀	0₀	3₀	2₁	0₂	4₂	x	x	9
4	Kaitlyn Ashmore	North Melbourne	1₁	0₁	3₄	0₄	4₈	0₈	x	x	8
4	Jesse Wardlaw	Brisbane	1₁	3₄	1₅	2₇	1₈	0₈	x	x	8
4	Jasmine Garner	North Melbourne	0₀	2₂	1₃	0₃	2₅	3₈	x	x	8
7	Tayla Harris	Carlton	1₁	1₂	1₃	2₅	1₆	1₇	x	x	7
7	Cora Staunton	GWS	0₀	0₀	1₁	0₁	4₅	2₇	x	x	7
9	Rebecca Privitelli	GWS	0₀	0₀	3₃	1₄	2₆	0₆	x	x	6
9	Ashley Sharp	Fremantle	0₀	0₀	1₁	0₁	2₃	3₆	x	x	6
9	Daisy Bateman	North Melbourne	1₁	0₁	2₃	2₅	0₅	1₆	x	x	6

Source