AFLX is a variation of

Australian rules football Australian football, also called Australian rules football or Aussie rules, or more simply football or footy, is a contact sport played between two teams of 18 players on an Australian rules football playing field, oval field, often a modified ...

designed in 2017 to be played on a soccer field (significantly smaller than the Australian rules oval). Unlike the full 18-a-side game (or the already established variant for rectangular fields, nine-a-side footy, including the AFL's own variant AFL 9s), AFLX required fewer players (initially 7, but increased to 8) with some modified rules aimed at generating higher scores, including increased scoring points. It was founded in an attempt to appeal to a wider audience outside of its origin country of

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country comprising mainland Australia, the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania and list of islands of Australia, numerous smaller isl ...

. The AFL billed AFLX as its answer to

Twenty20 Twenty20 (abbreviated T20) is a shortened format of cricket. At the professional level, it was introduced by the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) in 2003 for the county cricket, inter-county competition. In a Twenty20 game, the two t ...

Rugby Sevens Rugby sevens (commonly known simply as sevens, and originally seven-a-side rugby) is a variant of rugby union in which teams are made up of seven players playing seven-minute halves, instead of the usual 15 players playing 40-minute halves. R ...

. The AFL held two official

Australian Football League The Australian Football League (AFL) is the pre-eminent professional sports, professional competition of Australian rules football. It was originally named the Victorian Football League (VFL) and was founded in 1896 as a breakaway competition ...

(AFL) pre-season AFLX competitions featuring senior AFL clubs and players, in

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and

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, but these were unpopular with spectators and did not return in 2020. The variation continues to be promoted by the AFL Commission as a participation sport in development regions and areas, and particularly where full-sized cricket grounds are not available. Since the

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic (also known as the coronavirus pandemic and COVID pandemic), caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), began with an disease outbreak, outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China, in December ...

, AFLX has been merged with AFL 9s and retained only the X brand, co-branding AFL 9s as Junior X, Youth X and Senior X and aligning it with the more widely established 9-a-side format.

Rules

The rules of the game differed from standard Australian rules football in some significant ways. The game was played on a rectangular

soccer Association football, more commonly known as football or soccer, is a team sport played between two teams of 11 Football player, players who almost exclusively use their feet to propel a Ball (association football), ball around a rectangular f ...

-sized pitch, allowing matches to be hosted by stadiums that usually lacked the suitable field dimensions for Australian rules football. The format was modified in the second year, with AFLX 2019 seeing slightly changed rules: * Games consist of two 10-minute halves with a two-minute break at half-time * Played on a rectangular field with dimensions similar to that of a soccer field * Eight players on the field per team, with six players on the bench and no limit to rotations (up from the 10 players per side in 2018) * Last-touch out-of-bounds rule introduced (team that had last touch loses possession) * The field umpire will throw the ball up to begin play at the start of each half and after a supergoal is scored * 10-point super goals are registered for goals kicked from outside the 40-metre arc * No marks paid for backwards kicks (except for kicks/marks inside the forward 40-metre arc) * Free shot from inside the 40-metre arc to the opposite team in the event of a rushed behind * Players can run 20 metres without taking a bounce or touching the ball on the ground.

History

AFLX was first trialled at Arden Street Oval in January 2017.2017 AFL Annual Report
/ref> In March 2017, it was trialed at was first trialled on a soccer pitch at Lakeside Stadium in a match between the Port Melbourne Football Club and Coburg Football Club. It was launched by AFL manager of football operations Simon Lethlean in July 2017 and later hailed by the AFL as key means of kickstarting Australian rules football in China as part of the AFL and Port Adelaide's push in to the country which was acknowledged to lacked the infrastructure to support the growth of the full 18-player game. On 6 February 2018, the AFLX pre-season competition was launched by AFL

Chief Executive Officer A chief executive officer (CEO), also known as a chief executive or managing director, is the top-ranking corporate officer charged with the management of an organization, usually a company or a nonprofit organization. CEOs find roles in variou ...

Gillon McLachlan at

Docklands Stadium Docklands Stadium, known by naming rights sponsorship as Marvel Stadium, is a multi-purpose sports and entertainment stadium in the suburb of Docklands, Victoria, Docklands in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. Construction started in October 199 ...

. McLachlan said that AFLX would help promote football internationally. The 2018 competition attracted more than 40,000 fans to tournaments in

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and

Sydney Sydney is the capital city of the States and territories of Australia, state of New South Wales and the List of cities in Australia by population, most populous city in Australia. Located on Australia's east coast, the metropolis surrounds Syd ...

. In Melbourne, TV ratings were reported as "modest" by AFL standards, with the three events drawing an average five-city metro audience of over 120,000 on Channel Seven's secondary channels. The AFL made several rule tweaks midway through the second season in attempt to make it higher scoring by inflating the scoring points for behinds from 1 to 2, goals from 6 to 12 and Super Goals from 10 to 20. The 2019 E. J. Whitten Legends Game was also played under "EJX" (modified version of AFLX named after E J Whitten) at

AAMI Park The Melbourne Rectangular Stadium, currently known as AAMI Park for sponsorship reasons, is a multi-purpose stadium located in the Melbourne Sports and Entertainment Precinct in the suburb of East Melbourne, Melbourne, Victoria (state), Victor ...

in Melbourne. It attracted just 6,000 spectators, the lowest in the series history. In August 2019, the AFL confirmed AFLX would not return as a senior AFL competition in 2020, to allow a greater focus on AFLW. Post the

, the AFL increased the number of players to 9, effectively merging AFLX with AFL 9s and aligning with the widely established 9-a-side format.

Reception

The reception to the two AFL pre-season competitions among fans and the media was mostly poor, with

ABC Radio Grandstand ABC Sport, formerly ABC Radio Grandstand, is a live radio sports focused commentary and talk-back program which runs on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) local radio network across Australia and on one digital-only station. History ...

journalist Richard Hinds being particularly savage in labelling it a "hollow, unappealing, pressure-free, atmosphere-deficient, oval-in-a-rectangle hole yawn-fest". Con Stavros of

RMIT The Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (abbreviated as RMIT University) is a public research university located in the city of Melbourne in Victoria, Australia., section 4(b) Established in 1887 by Francis Ormond, it is the seventh-o ...

's school of Economics, Finance and Marketing, expressed doubts about the potential of AFLX to export Australian rules football but acknowledged that using rectangular playing fields instead of the standard cricket ones would make such expansion easier.

AFL Pre-season Tournaments

References

External links