AFLW Draft and Pathways Explained

The AFLW draft is how eighteen clubs recruit new players, held on a single night in December after the season finishes. Clubs pick in reverse ladder order across several rounds, picks can be traded, and clubs with academy or father-daughter links to a player can match a rival's bid rather than lose her. The 2025 AFLW draft ran to 63 selections across six rounds at Marvel Stadium, with Richmond taking Western Australian key forward Olivia Wolmarans first.

To be eligible a player must turn 18 on or before 31 December of the draft year and be registered with a recognised Australian football club or school competition. There is no upper age limit, which is the single biggest difference from the men's draft and the reason the AFLW still takes players in their mid-twenties out of state league football and out of other sports altogether.

Behind the draft sits a pathway that did not exist a decade ago. In 2016 the AFL had to build eight lists out of state league football and cross-code converts because there was no under-18 girls' competition producing ready-made footballers. There is now: the Coates Talent League Girls in Victoria and Tasmania, state academies in every other jurisdiction, a national under-18 championships, a national academy and a combine. This guide covers the draft mechanics, every route into it, and what the system still cannot do.

What the AFLW draft is for

Two things at once. It distributes new talent to the clubs that need it most, and it is the only way most players enter the competition.

The first purpose is the standard argument for any draft: reverse-order selection is a redistribution mechanism that stops the strongest clubs from simply buying the best teenagers. The second matters more in the AFLW than in the men's competition, because AFLW lists are small — in the low thirties — and turn over quickly. One good draft night can move a club from the bottom half to a finals side within two seasons.

How the first lists were built in 2016

There was no pathway, so the AFL improvised.

Each of the eight foundation clubs was allowed to sign two marquee players from anywhere in the country at an elevated salary, a set number of priority players with existing ties to the club, and up to two rookies who had not played competitive Australian rules football in the previous three years — a clause written specifically to allow cross-code recruitment.

Everyone else went into a draft on 12 October 2016 at Docklands, with players allocated to state-based zones so that a Western Australian could not be taken by a Victorian club. The minimum age was 18. That draft populated the competition described in the AFLW guide, and almost none of it resembles how the draft works now.

Who is eligible now

Two tests, and they are simpler than the men's equivalent.

Age. A player must have turned 18, or will turn 18, on or before 31 December of the draft year. There is no maximum.

Registration. She must be registered to play that year in a recognised Australian club or school football competition, or have been a bona fide resident of another country for the three continuous years before the draft — the clause that admits Irish players.

The absence of an upper age limit is the whole character of the AFLW draft. The men's draft is overwhelmingly a market in 18-year-olds. The AFLW draft is a market in 18-year-olds, 22-year-old state league players who have been developing quietly, and occasionally a 30-year-old from another sport whose athletic profile a club believes it can convert.

Nominating

A player nominates for the draft before a published deadline. Nomination is a form, not an invitation — anyone eligible can lodge one, and plenty of players nominate without expecting to be taken.

Clubs then receive the full list of nominees, including anyone who has nominated as a potential father-daughter selection. That list is the pool. A player who does not nominate cannot be drafted, which sounds obvious and is nonetheless the most common way a genuine prospect misses a year.

1. 1Junior and school footballA player starts in local Auskick, junior club football or a school competition, playing in mixed or girls-only teams depending on the region.
2. 2Under-16 developmentState-based development championships identify 15 and 16-year-olds several years out from the draft and place them in structured programmes.
3. 3Talent league or state academyThe best under-18 players are listed with a Coates Talent League Girls club in Victoria and Tasmania, or a state academy elsewhere, and play a full season under AFLW-standard coaching.
4. 4Under-18 championshipsEach state selects a squad for the national under-18 championships, which is the main event where recruiters compare players from different states against each other.
5. 5National academy and combineAbout 30 of the country's leading 18-year-olds are selected for the national academy, and clubs nominate players for physical testing and interviews at the combine.
6. 6Draft nightClubs select in reverse ladder order in December, with academy and father-daughter bids matched, and a nominated player either hears her name or does not.

The standard route through the Victorian and Tasmanian system. Players in other states follow the same sequence with a state academy and state league in place of the talent league.

How the draft order is set

Reverse ladder order, so the wooden spooner picks first in each round and the premier picks last. That is the starting point and rarely the finishing one.

Picks are tradeable, and AFLW clubs trade them aggressively. Richmond did not finish last in 2025 — it traded up to secure the first selection. Gold Coast stockpiled selections specifically so it could match the bids it knew were coming for its academy players. By the time the draft opens, the published order and the indicative order from October can look very different.

There is also a points system underneath, used to value picks when a club matches a bid. Its purpose is to make an academy or father-daughter match cost something proportionate rather than being a free gift.

Academy bids and how matching works

Clubs in the states where Australian football is not the dominant winter code run academies that give them priority access to local players. In the AFLW the significant ones belong to Gold Coast, Sydney, Greater Western Sydney and Brisbane.

The mechanism is a bid. A rival club can call a linked player's name at any point in the draft, and the academy club then chooses whether to match that bid using its own draft capital. If it matches, it keeps the player and pays in picks. If it does not, the bidding club takes her.

The 2025 draft is the clearest recent illustration. Greater Western Sydney used picks two and three to bid on Gold Coast academy players, Scarlett Johnson and Kiera Yerbury. Gold Coast, which had accumulated selections for exactly this, then took Sunny Lappin at four, Ava Usher at seven and Georja Davies at nine.

The men's version of this system, and the points ledger behind it, is set out in the AFL academies guide. The AFLW version follows the same logic with smaller numbers.

Father-daughter selections

A club has priority access to the daughter of a player who met a service qualification at that club, on the same matched-bid basis as an academy player. Maya Dear went to Hawthorn and Meg Lappin to Brisbane through this route in 2025.

The rule is inherited from the men's competition, where the father-son rule is one of the oldest features of the recruiting system. Applying it to the AFLW creates an obvious asymmetry: for the first years of the competition, the qualifying parent could only be a father, because no woman had played long enough in the AFLW to have a draft-age daughter. That will change, and the league has been working through how the equivalent access for AFLW mothers should operate.

The 2025 draft at the top

Pick	Player	Club	Route
1	Olivia Wolmarans	Richmond	Open
2	Scarlett Johnson	Greater Western Sydney	Bid on academy player
3	Kiera Yerbury	Greater Western Sydney	Bid on academy player
4	Sunny Lappin	Gold Coast	Academy
5	Chloe Bown	Adelaide	Open
6	Alex Neyland	Sydney	Academy
7	Ava Usher	Gold Coast	Academy
8	Imogen Trengove	Collingwood	Open
9	Georja Davies	Gold Coast	Academy
10	Maggie Johnstone	Essendon	Open

Gold Coast3

Greater Western Sydney2

Richmond1

Adelaide1

Sydney1

Collingwood1

Essendon1

Counts selections used inside the first ten picks, including bids on academy players. It is not a measure of draft value, because a matched bid costs the academy club picks elsewhere.

Show the numbers

Clubs holding a top-ten selection at the 2025 AFLW draft

Item	Value
Gold Coast	3
Greater Western Sydney	2
Richmond	1
Adelaide	1
Sydney	1
Collingwood	1
Essendon	1

Four of the top ten were academy selections and two more were bids on academy players, which tells you how much of the 2025 crop came out of the northern states. That is a recent development. For most of the competition's history the strongest draft classes came out of Victoria.

• 63National draft selections
• 6Rounds in the national draft
• 11Pre-season draft selections
• 18Clubs selecting

Structural counts from the December 2025 national draft and the following pre-season draft. Does not include rookie signings made outside the draft.

The Coates Talent League Girls

This is the competition AFLW recruiters watch most closely. It is an under-18 competition — with a small allowance for under-19 players — covering twelve Victorian regions plus Tasmania across 13 clubs, with academy sides from the northern states also fielding teams in it.

It launched in 2017, the same year as the AFLW itself, under the name TAC Cup Girls. It became the NAB League Girls in 2019 and the Coates Talent League Girls in 2023, and Tasmania joined in 2019.

The clubs are the same regional structures that have fed the men's draft for decades: Bendigo Pioneers, Calder Cannons, Dandenong Stingrays, Eastern Ranges, Geelong Falcons, Gippsland Power, Greater Western Victoria Rebels, Murray Bushrangers, Northern Knights, Oakleigh Chargers, Sandringham Dragons, Western Jets and Tasmania Devils. Oakleigh has won the most girls' premierships.

Playing a talent league season is the single most useful thing a Victorian or Tasmanian prospect can do, not because the football is dramatically better than the best club football, but because every AFLW recruiter is at the ground.

The under-18 championships

Each state selects a squad for the national AFLW under-18 championships, held mid-year. It is the only event where the best 18-year-olds from Victoria, South Australia, Western Australia, Queensland, New South Wales and the smaller states play against each other.

For recruiters this is the calibration exercise. A player dominating a Coates Talent League season is dominating a specific standard of opposition. The championships establish whether she does the same against the best of every other state. A strong championships can move a player twenty places up a draft board in a fortnight.

There is also an under-16 layer beneath it, the national development championships, which identifies 15 and 16-year-olds several years before they are draftable and places them in structured programmes.

The national academy

Around 30 of the country's leading 18-year-olds are selected into the AFL's national academy for a given draft year. They attend camps through the year, receive specialised coaching and education, and play a match together as a squad.

The academy does not confer any draft advantage — it is not a club programme and it gives no club priority access. What it does is accelerate development and give the AFL a clear national ranking of where the best prospects sit. Most first-round picks in any AFLW draft have been through it.

The combine

Before the draft, clubs nominate the players they want tested. Those receiving the most nominations are invited to the combine, where they complete a battery of physical assessments — vertical jumps, a 2km time trial, the yo-yo endurance test — and sit interviews with club recruiters.

Two things are worth understanding about it. First, the invitation itself is information: a player invited to the combine has been nominated by multiple clubs, which is a strong signal. Second, the combine almost never makes a draft position. It confirms what recruiters already believe, or it raises a question about a player's running capacity that costs her a round or two.

Pathways outside Victoria

The Coates Talent League Girls covers Victoria and Tasmania. Everywhere else runs its own structure.

South Australia and Western Australia feed prospects through their state league women's competitions and state academies, and both have long-established football cultures that produce players in volume — the systems described in the SANFL and WAFL guides have women's equivalents attached to them.

Queensland and New South Wales rely more heavily on the club academies, which is why Gold Coast, Brisbane, Sydney and Greater Western Sydney have the access they do. In states where Australian football competes with rugby league and football for teenage athletes, an academy is a retention tool as much as a development one.

The Northern Territory produces players well out of proportion to its population and has a team in the talent league structure.

Cross-code and mature-age entry

The AFLW still recruits outside football, and the no-upper-age-limit rule is what makes it possible.

Clubs sign rookies during a designated movement period each year. The 2025 intake included players out of netball and Gaelic football, which are the two most common source sports — netball for the aerial contest and the change-of-direction running, Gaelic football because the game is close enough that the transfer is short.

Mature-age recruitment from state league football is the larger stream. A 24-year-old who has been the best player in a state competition for three seasons is a known quantity in a way an 18-year-old never is, and for a club needing to win now she is often the better pick.

This is a real difference from the men's system, where a player over 21 entering the draft is unusual. In the AFLW it is normal, and it is one of the few genuinely open doors left in elite Australian sport.

The pre-season and supplementary drafts

The national draft is not the only entry point.

A pre-season draft is held after the national draft to fill list spots created by retirements, delistings and inactive-list placements. The 2026 AFLW pre-season draft ran on 4 May with 11 selections. It is where delisted players most often find a second club.

A supplementary selection period has also been used in some seasons to let clubs sign replacements for long-term injuries once a season is under way. Because AFLW lists are small, losing two players to season-ending injuries in the same week is a genuine crisis, and these mechanisms exist to stop a club fielding an understrength side for months.

What recruiters are actually looking for

Ask an AFLW recruiter what separates a first-round pick from a fourth-rounder and the answer is rarely about numbers.

Running capacity comes first, and it is the reason the 2km time trial and the yo-yo test carry weight at the combine. Sixteen players covering a full-sized oval for four 17-minute quarters is a heavy aerobic load, and a player who cannot sustain it will not hold a position no matter how skilled she is.

Kicking under pressure comes second. The single most visible gap between AFLW football in 2017 and now is disposal by foot, and clubs recruit for it directly. A player who can hit a target 40 metres away with a defender closing is scarce.

Contested ball-winning comes third. The AFLW is a contested competition — fewer players on the ground means more one-on-one situations, and a player who wins her own ball is valuable at every level.

Position scarcity then distorts everything. Genuine key-position players, tall enough to play on a full-forward or hold down a centre half-back, are the hardest thing to find in the draft, and a tall who can mark will be taken 15 picks earlier than her general football ability would suggest. A ruck who is competitive at AFLW level is scarcer still.

Age and readiness is the final variable, and it works both ways. An 18-year-old with a high ceiling is worth a top pick to a rebuilding club. A 23-year-old who is ready to play round one is worth more to a club two wins from finals.

How the AFLW draft differs from the men's

The two systems share a vocabulary and very little else.

The men's draft is a market in 18-year-olds with a highly developed points ledger, compensation picks for free agency losses, priority picks for struggling clubs, a rookie draft, a mid-season draft and a pre-season draft — the full apparatus is set out in the AFL draft guide. The AFLW draft is simpler by design and, because of the missing upper age limit, draws from a far wider pool.

The consequences show up on lists. A men's club can carry a teenager for three years before he plays a senior match. An AFLW club with a list in the low thirties and a twelve-round season cannot, so AFLW draftees play early or not at all. The average AFLW debut comes far sooner after draft night than the men's equivalent.

It also changes the risk calculation. A men's club that gets a top-five pick wrong has wasted a valuable asset but has depth to absorb it. An AFLW club that gets one wrong has lost a meaningful share of its list. That is the argument for the mature-age pick: less upside, far less variance.

What a drafted player's first year looks like

She arrives into a pre-season that starts several months before the August opening round, training in the evenings around work or study, with a strength and conditioning programme written for someone who has never done one.

The physical step up is the largest single shock. Talent league football does not prepare a player for AFLW contact or for the running demand, and a substantial share of first-year players spend part of the season managing a soft-tissue problem picked up in the first six weeks of pre-season.

The football step is smaller than people expect. Because AFLW lists are small and the season short, a first-year player who is physically ready will often be in the round-one side. Several of the competition's best players were regular senior selections within a month of being drafted, which is close to unheard of in the men's game.

The third element is the one nobody writes about: logistics. A drafted player may need to move state, find work or transfer a university course, and clubs employ staff specifically to solve those problems because a player who cannot make the move is a wasted pick.

Contracts, tiers and the coming salary cap

A drafted player signs on the AFLW's tiered payment structure, which under the collective bargaining agreement running to the end of 2027 places two players per club on tier one, six on tier two, six on tier three and the rest on tier four. A first-year draftee starts on the bottom tier.

The AFL and the players' association have moved to replace the tiers with a conventional salary cap, which would give clubs the ability to pay a genuine star well above the rest of the list. That change matters for the draft because it changes what a top pick is worth: under a tier system a number-one selection is paid the same as the last pick in her first year, and under a cap she may not be. The men's version of the same problem is covered in the AFL salary cap guide.

Trade period and free agency

Trade and signing periods run in the weeks between the end of the AFLW season and the draft. Both players and picks move, and AFLW trade periods have historically been busier relative to list size than the men's, explained in the AFL trade period guide.

The reason is partly contractual — AFLW deals have been shorter than men's contracts — and partly practical. Semi-professional players relocate for university, for work and for family, and a club that cannot offer a player a job or a course in the right city may lose her regardless of football. Clubs have become expert at solving those problems, and a recruiting conversation in the AFLW is often as much about employment as it is about football.

What the pathway still cannot do

Three gaps are worth naming honestly.

Access outside the cities. The talent league covers regional Victoria well, but a 15-year-old in a small town in another state may have no girls' competition at all and no realistic way to be seen. Country football is discussed in the country football guide, and the girls' side of it is still thinner than the boys'.

The cost of the pathway. Travelling to talent league fixtures and state championships is expensive for families, and there is no scholarship system that fully removes it.

The gap between drafted and ready. A drafted 18-year-old arrives into a semi-professional programme with a twelve-round season. She may play 30 senior matches by the time she is 21, against a men's equivalent who has played 60 in a full-time environment. That is not a failure of the draft. It is a consequence of a competition that is still growing, and it is why AFLW players tend to peak later than their male counterparts.

Common misconceptions

"The AFLW draft is only for teenagers." There is no upper age limit and never has been.

"An academy player is a free pick." She is not. The academy club must match a rival bid using its own draft capital.

"You have to play in the Coates Talent League to be drafted." You have to be seen. The talent league is the easiest way to be seen if you live in Victoria or Tasmania, and irrelevant if you do not.

"The combine decides the draft order." It rarely moves a player up. It occasionally moves one down.

"Draft order is fixed by the ladder." It starts that way and is then traded, sometimes heavily.

"Missing out on draft night ends it." It does not. The pre-season draft, the supplementary period and the rookie signing window all sit behind the national draft, and plenty of current AFLW players were passed over at least once before a club took them.

How to follow a draft night

The draft is broadcast live in December, and the AFL publishes an indicative order in the weeks before it. The useful preparation is to read that order alongside the academy and father-daughter nominations, because those are where the surprises come from — a bid at pick two on a player everybody assumed would go to her academy club changes the next twenty selections.

Recruiting media publish draft guides and power rankings through the second half of the year, and the under-18 championships in the middle of the year is where most of the reputations are made. For where the drafted players end up, and what the competition they are entering actually looks like, start with the AFLW guide. For the individual honours waiting at the end of it, the Coleman Medal guide covers the goalkicking award, the Brownlow guide covers umpire voting, and the All-Australian guide covers the team of the year. The broader Australian sporting picture sits at the Australia hub and in the sports section.