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AFL Pre-Season Explained: Scratch Matches, Training and What It All Means
Scratch matches, the pre-season cup, and the murky art of reading a result that doesn’t really count yet. What actually happens before round one.
AFL pre-season runs through the Australian summer, covering pre-season training, intra-club and inter-club practice matches, and a structured pre-season competition, before the home-and-away season proper begins. None of it carries premiership points, but all of it shapes how clubs and fans read form heading into round one.
The Key Terms
Scratch Match
Internal practice
An informal practice match, often intra-club (a team split into two squads) or against another club, played without the structure or stakes of a competitive fixture. Scratch matches are used to test fitness, combinations, and game plans away from public and media scrutiny, though some are open to crowds and broadcast in limited form.
Pre-Season Competition
Structured cup format
A more formal pre-season tournament involving most or all AFL clubs, played in a knockout or round-based format in the weeks before round one. The competition has changed names and formats repeatedly across AFL history but consistently serves the same function: genuine match practice with some stakes, without affecting the premiership ladder.
Trial Match
Higher-stakes practice
A practice match treated with more seriousness than a scratch match, often used as the final form-check before the season begins. Coaches use trial matches to finalise team selection for round one, particularly for players returning from injury or fringe players competing for a senior spot.
Pre-Season Form
Notoriously unreliable
The performance of teams and individual players in the pre-season period, widely understood by experienced football followers to be an unreliable predictor of actual season form. Coaches frequently experiment with line-ups, rest key players, and avoid full-intensity tactics during pre-season — making pre-season results a poor guide to round one expectations, a point regularly repeated by commentators every year regardless.
Why Pre-Season Still Matters
Despite the unreliability of pre-season results as a predictor, the period itself is genuinely important for clubs. It is when new recruits are integrated, game plans are tested against real opposition, fitness bases are built, and depth players get genuine senior-level minutes that can influence selection debates heading into the proper season. For supporters, pre-season is also the first real opportunity to see new signings, returning stars, and emerging young talent in a match context, which sustains significant media and fan interest even though nothing on the scoreboard counts toward a premiership.
Pre-season injuries carry disproportionate weight in football conversation precisely because they occur in matches that otherwise don’t matter — a serious injury in a scratch match is purely cost with no competitive benefit gained, which is why clubs manage player workloads carefully during this period.
Reading Pre-Season Like an Informed Fan
Experienced AFL followers tend to watch pre-season for specific signals rather than results: how a new recruit looks in the system, whether a player returning from injury appears at full pace, and which fringe players are getting genuine senior opportunities. The final score is treated as close to irrelevant. This is one of the more counterintuitive things for newcomers to grasp — a match can be watched closely and taken seriously by football insiders while the actual outcome is dismissed entirely.
Related Pages
AFL Slang & Culture — The Complete Guide
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