The NAB AFL Women’s Competition will remain as an eight-team League for Season 2018.

On Tuesday, the AFL Commission announced that expansion of the popular AFLW would occur in 2019.

AFL Chief Executive Gillon McLachlan said the Commission had accepted a recommendation from the AFL Executive that consolidation was required for the second year of the competition.

Further talent identification and development, along with continued work to build the fan base of all clubs, was needed as a key priority to enable extra teams to enter the league in 2019.

Mr McLachlan said that all 10 Clubs that are currently not licensed to compete in the NAB AFL Women’s Competition would be invited to submit an application for inclusion in the 2019 competition.

Those Clubs that were granted provisional licenses (Geelong Cats, North Melbourne, Richmond, St Kilda and West Coast) will receive priority weighting when consideration is given to the submissions for inclusion in the competition in 2019.

Mr McLachlan said a decision would be made this year on the additional teams, to provide the competition and those clubs granted the right to join sufficient time to prepare for their entry.

“The AFL Commission accepted a recommendation that we need to consolidate the strong work that was achieved in year one of the NAB AFL Women’s Competition, with the addition of new teams to come into the competition to be set for 2019,” Mr McLachlan said.

“Our primary objective is to provide women and girls with an equal opportunity to play elite Australian Football and to increase the female participation and interest in our game.

“We need to further invest in both building our audience for the NAB AFL Women’s Competition and ensuring the talent pool can expand to be ready for the addition of new teams in 2019.

“Announcing the expansion teams later this year for the 2019 season will allow the competition to finalise its list-build rules for the new clubs before this year’s draft.

“It will also provide the time to focus strongly on talent identification and player development whilst enabling us to have discussions with both the AFLPA and our sponsors and broadcast partners before the 2019 season.”