Second year of all 18 teams could see levelling of the playing field and end dominance of Adelaide, Melbourne and Brisbane
Last year brought two AFLW seasons thanks to the league’s shift from summer to late August and it has made the wait for Friday night’s 2023 season opener feel that much longer. While there was no main draft this off-season given the intake between the last two seasons, there’s still been plenty of change. A tumultuous trade period gave way to a mature-age supplementary draft in April before the players settled in for pre-season at the end of May. It means there are a lot of unknowns.
St Kilda were perhaps the most proactive over the off-season, picking up the league’s leading goalkicker, Jesse Wardlaw, from Brisbane, along with Collingwood’s former captain Steph Chiocci and midfielder Jaimee Lambert. It will amp up the pressure on Nick Dal Santo’s team to take their performance to the next level, never having won more than three matches in a season.
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