WE are officially one step closer to AFLW season 7, with the release of the fixture today.

As previously announced, there will be 10 rounds in the season and four weeks of finals.

Yes, there will be a top eight finals series this season, which mirrors the one fans are used to in the AFL Men’s competition.

Season 7 begins on Thursday, August 25 with what has become a bit of the traditional season opener – Carlton vs Collingwood at Ikon Park.

The following day will see the Grand Final rematch from season 6, with the Crows to host the Dees at Norwood Oval.

The Saturday of Round 1 is a big day for the expansion clubs, with the four newest sides all due to play their inaugural games on the same day.

Port Adelaide are in the west to face the Eagles, the Swans will host the Saints at North Sydney Oval while the Bombers and Hawks will square off against each other at ETU Stadium.

On that inaugural match, Hawks coach Bec Goddard is imploring on fans to sell out that game so it can be moved to a bigger ground.

“I’m so excited about the opportunity we have to sell this game out.”

“If we sell it out, it’s going to have to get moved to Marvel. I would love to see it moved to Marvel, and let our players and our inaugural teams and all of our fans be able to attend that game in a stadium for round one.”

There are a number of floating fixture times at the moment. This is because the AFL want to set up as many double header opportunities with the AFLM as possible.

One of the consequences of a shortened season is that there are still a number of clubs who are yet to face each other in the season – Carlton and West Coast, Collingwood and Gold Coast, and Melbourne and Geelong.

When asked why these clubs still haven’t faced each other, the AFL’s general manager of competition management Laura Kane did not really answer the question.

“From a broadcast perspective and a fixturing perspective, with 10 games it’s and 18 teams it doesn’t fit neatly, obviously so to state the obvious, so the structure of the fixture is to achieve a whole lot of variety of outcomes, and provide balance to teams that may have finished in the top half of the ladder the season before and in fact the teams that finished in the bottom half of the ladder, and we want to make sure that we create exciting games of footy to both play and watch and a balanced competition. So that maths doesn’t work in terms of everybody being able to play each other, and there are some outliers, but we are quite confident that we’ve found a balance and if those two teams make finals they might find a way to play each other at the pointy end of the season.”

Check out the full fixture here.