The fixture for the 2018 AFL season has been released and as always, it is loaded with blockbusters that you cannot afford to miss.

Each club has received their fixture for 2018, each varying in difficulty depending on how your club finished last season.

Richmond have been dealt a brutal draw which includes double-ups against the Adelaide Crows and Geelong Cats, while the two Sydney clubs, the Swans and Giants, have both been dealt the most brutal set of cards, drawing three top-six opponents twice.

Collingwood, on the other hand, have landed a favourable draw which should help Nathan Buckley’s men return to the finals for the first time since 2013.

Let’s now have a look at some of the highlights than fans can expect in 2018.

1. Round 1 – March 22-25
Round one of the 2018 premiership season will be massive for a variety of reasons, ranging from Richmond unfurling their premiership flag to the West Coast Eagles christening the new Perth Stadium against an old-time rival.

The traditional season-opening match between Richmond and Carlton will have added significance as the Tigers will unfurl their 2017 premiership flag prior to the first bounce of the new season.

This will mark the first time since 2001 that the reigning premier has featured in the first match of the new season, when Essendon defeated North Melbourne by 85 points at the MCG.

The following night, Essendon hosts the Adelaide Crows at Etihad Stadium in what will prove to be an early season challenge for both clubs.

The Bombers will be keen to build on their impressive 2017 season, in which they returned to the finals twelve months after claiming the wooden spoon, while the Crows will be bidding to go one better after they failed to fire a shot against Richmond in last year’s grand final.

Saturday will see St Kilda host the Brisbane Lions in what will be the first outing in Lions colours for Luke Hodge after his ‘retirement’ proved to be short-lived, having been lured to the Gabba by Lions coach and former Hawthorn assistant Chris Fagan to aid the club’s rebuild.

The unusual starting time of 3:35pm is to avoid a potential clash with the AFL Women’s grand final which, unlike the men’s equivalent, does not have a fixed starting time or venue.

Port Adelaide will kick off the season at the Oval with a home clash against Fremantle, while the Gold Coast Suns will play the first of four relocated home games (Metricon Stadium is unavailable for the first half of the season due to the Commonwealth Games) against North Melbourne in Cairns.

Two more MCG blockbusters will see Hawthorn pitted up against Collingwood on the Saturday night, while Gary Ablett Jr will begin his second life as a Cat against Melbourne on the Sunday afternoon.

In Canberra, the GWS Giants and Western Bulldogs will renew hostilities before the West Coast Eagles finish the round by welcoming the Sydney Swans to the new Perth Stadium.

2. The grand final rematch highlights the Easter Round
The Adelaide Crows will not have to wait long for an early chance to avenge their grand final loss to Richmond, with the visit of the premiers to the Oval on the Thursday night to highlight another massive Easter round.

The Crows proved to be the form team of the 2017 season by a country mile, being the highest-scoring team in the AFL for the second year running, but saved their worst for last as they booted their lowest score for the year (8.12 (60)) in the match that mattered the most.

While the Tigers had the majority of the 100,000+ crowd at the MCG on September 30 this year on their side, this time, a crowd of over 50,000 at the Adelaide Oval are not expected to be so forgiving.

Good Friday football returns for another season, with North Melbourne to host St Kilda, who replace the Western Bulldogs in this timeslot, at Etihad Stadium in the midst of the Good Friday Appeal.

Fremantle will make its debut at the new Perth Stadium when it hosts Essendon in what will be the first free-to-air match at the ground, meaning it will be televised to a national audience on Seven except in Brisbane (which will receive a telecast of the Lions versus Melbourne clash at the Gabba).

The Easter round finishes off with traditional rivals the Geelong Cats hosting Hawthorn at the MCG, with the return bout in Round 21 to mark the ten-year anniversary of the Hawks’ stunning premiership win in 2008.

3. The package versus the Western Bulldogs, Etihad Stadium, Round 3
Fans of the Western Bulldogs will not have to wait long to let their feelings known towards one of their former favourite pups, Jake Stringer, who defected to Essendon during the recent trade period.

One of their heroes in the unexpected 2016 premiership victory, Stringer endured a below-par 2017 season plagued by injury and inconsistency, and despite being contracted to the end of the 2018 season, coach Luke Beveridge decided to put him on the trade table.

‘The Package’ was then signed, sealed and delivered to Windy Hill where he, along with fellow recruits Devon Smith and Adam Saad, will join a side that is continuing to rise from the Ashes of the supplements saga which burdened so much on the club between 2013 and 2016.

Thus, tensions are set to simmer under the roof at Etihad Stadium on the Sunday; such is the huge interest in this clash, it will be televised on Channel Seven to serve as a lead-in to the network’s 6:00pm news bulletin.

Another grudge match in Round 3 will see new Port Adelaide recruit Tom Rockliff take on his former teammates, the Brisbane Lions, on the Saturday afternoon.

Rockliff, a former co-captain of the Lions, will be spared the wrath of the crowd, with the Power’s clash with the Lions at the Oval to be their only meeting for the season, meaning he misses out on a return to the Gabba.

In fact, Port Adelaide won’t travel to Queensland at all in 2018, with their only meeting against the Suns to be played in Shanghai once again (in Round 9), after which is followed by the bye.

Meanwhile, Fremantle will play an ‘away’ clash against the Gold Coast Suns in their own backyard, the Dockers benefiting from an extra game at Perth Stadium as a result of Metricon Stadium’s unavailability in the first half of the season due to the Commonwealth Games.

That will only be part of a massive weekend for WA football fans, with the West Coast Eagles to host the Geelong Cats the following day; both matches could draw over 100,000 fans across 24 hours.

The Suns will stay in Perth the week after their clash against Fremantle, to face the Eagles before they return home for an away QClash against the Brisbane Lions at the Gabba in Round 5.

4. Gary Ablett Jr’s homecoming, GMHBA Stadium, Round 4
Cats fans, keep Sunday, April 15 free because that is the day the Little Master finally comes home (well, literally).

After three games away from Kardinia Park to start the new season, the Cats will return to the ground, which has been renamed GMHBA Stadium, when they host St Kilda for the first time since mid-2014.

Their first ‘home’ game of the season promises to be an emotional one, as Gary Ablett Jr returns to the ground where he created so many memories in his first stint as a Cat throughout the noughties.

That preceded seven rather tumultuous years at the Gold Coast Suns, where he led the club through their infancy and did all he could, albeit in vain, to help them climb up the ladder and realise their potential.

His return to the Cats, with whom he was part of their 2007 and 2009 premiership sides, has raised expectations for the club, which for the past two years has fallen short of a grand final berth.

He, along with 2016 Brownlow Medallist Patrick Dangerfield and current captain Joel Selwood, will together form a ‘Big Three’ which could prove difficult to shut down.

And it’s not good news for the Saints, who have been touted as potential improvers next season but have been given the rather dubious honour of being the first team to face the Cats at their home deck in 2018.

5. Anzac Round
Nine matches across six days should make Anzac Round 2018 a massive one.

It starts with the Sydney Swans welcoming the Adelaide Crows to the SCG for just the fourth time since 2008, in a rematch of last year’s Round 22 thriller which saw the Swans come from behind to win by three points at the Oval.

It will be the first of two Friday night premiership matches not to involve a Victorian side, with the Swans to be involved in the other one when they also host the West Coast Eagles at the SCG in Round 13.

Saturday night will see Steven Motlop come up against his old teammates when Port Adelaide entertain the Geelong Cats at the Oval, with the Power keen to avenge last season’s result where they lost by just two points in a thriller at Kardinia Park last May.

Melbourne and Richmond will once again face off in the Anzac Eve match, which next year falls on a Tuesday (Anzac Day is the following day).

It will be the first time since 1996, when Essendon and St Kilda had to complete a match that was suspended from the previous Saturday due to bad lighting, that a match is played on this day of the week.

However, it is the first time that an AFL premiership match has been scheduled for Tuesday night, and if the Anzac Eve match maintains its level of success, it will not happen again until at least 2029 (which is when Anzac Day next falls on a Wednesday after the end of the 2018 season).

It will be Melbourne’s home game this time around, and hosting the reigning premiers in the club’s second-biggest match of the season will almost certainly deliver them their biggest home crowd outside of Queen’s Birthday for quite a while.

Once again, Collingwood and Essendon will contest the biggest match of the regular season.

The last time Anzac Day fell on a Wednesday was back in 2012; on that occasion, the match was used to open the round.

However, next year it will be the final match of the round, coming just after the midway point of a typical seven-day week.

The result is that all four of Melbourne, Richmond, Collingwood and Essendon will endure short turnarounds of five and four days respectively.

The AFL has moved to resolve this by pitting Essendon up against Melbourne at Etihad Stadium, and Collingwood against Richmond at the MCG, with both matches to be played on the Sunday in Round 6.

6. The Bryce Gibbs Cup, Round 7, Adelaide Oval
Adelaide Crows fans have been waiting for over a decade to see Bryce Gibbs don the tri-colours of red, yellow and navy blue.

Gibbs could have become a Crow under the father-son rule during the 2006 draft, but was ruled ineligible because his father, Ross, played his 200th (out of 253) SANFL game for Glenelg after the Crows entered the AFL in 1991.

He was eventually drafted to Carlton where he played 231 games before making the decision to return home to Adelaide, and at age 28 (he will be 29 before the season starts) there is still plenty of good football left in him.

Many see him as potentially the missing piece in the Crows’ premiership puzzle after they were found wanting by Richmond in last year’s grand final, having been either first or second on the ladder during the regular season.

The match also has extra added significance, for the fact that not only will it be the first time the Adelaide Crows play Carlton at the Oval, it will also be the first time the Crows play them at home since 2010.

That follows seven straight meetings in Melbourne, but even then, by the end of the 2018 season, nine of the last eleven meetings will have taken place in Victoria, with the two clubs to clash at Etihad Stadium in the final round.

It will also mean that every club will have faced both the Crows, and Port Adelaide, at the Adelaide Oval at least once since the ground became a full-time AFL venue in 2014.

7. Luke Hodge versus Hawthorn, Rounds 9 and 17
When then-Hawthorn champion Luke Hodge walked off Etihad Stadium for the final time on August 25, many of us were made to believe that he had retired for good.

Weeks after his final match in a Hawthorn jumper, it emerged that the Brisbane Lions were looking to lure the three-time premiership captain out of retirement in a bid to fast-track the club’s on-field rebuild.

Then, on the final day of the trade period, the Lions got their man on a two-year term, meaning that he will add to the 305 games he chalked up at the Hawks after being drafted to the club as the number one pick in 2001.

This has added some intrigue to the two meetings between the Lions and Hawks in 2018, which will be the first time in a decade that the two clubs have doubled up in the same season.

The first will come in Round 9 at the Gabba, which will mark just the second time in that period that the Hawks have ventured to the sunshine capital.

The second will be in Round 17, in Launceston, which could prove to be somewhat of an emotional homecoming for the 33-year-old, who emerged as one of the most-loved players among the Tasmanian fans who regularly came to see the Hawks play in the Apple Isle.

Hodge’s arrival at the Gabba will provide the young playing list some valuable leadership and experience after the club claimed the wooden spoon under first-year coach Chris Fagan, a former Hawthorn general manager of football.

It will remain to be seen what impact Hodge makes at the club, and whether the Lions can continue to improve in his time there.

8. The Jake Lever Cup, Rounds 10 and 19
Without doubt one of the grudge matches of the 2018 season will be those between the Adelaide Crows and Melbourne, set down for rounds 10 and 19 in Alice Springs and Adelaide respectively.

The fuse has been set after Jake Lever successfully sought a trade to Melbourne during the off-season, citing the desire to be closer to family as well as join a club on the rise.

His decision to leave the Adelaide Crows at the end of the season earned the wrath of captain Taylor Walker, who claimed that Lever left the club to chase money rather than success.

Walker himself then earned the wrath of former Geelong champion Jimmy Bartel, who claimed that “he hadn’t achieved success yet”, referring to the Crows’ grand final loss to Richmond.

Lever won’t be the only ex-Crow in the Dees’ line-up, with Bernie Vince to also line up against the club he represented 129 times before he was traded to Melbourne at the end of the 2013 season.

Neither player, particularly Lever, is likely to receive a welcome return to the Oval in Round 19, which is when the tensions will really simmer (it must also be remembered that Vince famously engaged in a slanging match with Rory Sloane when the two sides met at the Oval early in the 2015 season).

Thus, the potential is there for the decibel meter to explode with boos from the always-unforgiving pro-Adelaide crowd and drown out anything ranging from fireworks to a food processor to even a typical Maria Sharapova grunt.

9. Jack Watts versus Melbourne, Round 14
Before the Dees face the Crows at the Oval in Round 19, they will travel to the City of Churches five weeks earlier to face Jack Watts and Port Adelaide on the Friday night stage in Round 14.

One of the stories of the off-season was the decision by the club to put Watts, the number one pick in the 2008 draft often blamed by many for the club’s constant underachieving over the past decade, on the trade table.

The 26-year-old was shipped to Port Adelaide where it is hoped that he can finally fulfill his potential on a regular basis, having shown flashes of what he can do in over 150 games for the Dees between 2009 and 2017.

Watts’ departure from Melbourne was met with mixed reaction from Dees fans; while he was made a poster boy for the club’s failures over the years, many of them had grown to love him as a player.

Despite Melbourne’s improvement over the past few years, this will be their only match on either a Thursday or Friday night, and the club’s lack of prime time matches, especially at home, is proof they still have a long way to go before they can really be considered a true ‘powerhouse’ club.

10. All the Derbies and the special fixtures
And of course, there are all the Derbies and special fixtures to look forward to over the balance of the 2018 AFL season.

It will be Essendon’s turn to host the Dreamtime at the G match this season, with the match against the reigning premiers, Richmond, expected to again attract a massive crowd at the MCG.

The Sydney Swans and Adelaide Crows will again host matches during Sir Doug Nicholls Round, facing Carlton and the GWS Giants respectively in matches expected to draw full houses.

Melbourne will once again host Collingwood in the annual Queen’s Birthday clash, before which the third Big Freeze at the G will take place. In the same round, St Kilda and the Sydney Swans will again clash in the Pride Match at Etihad Stadium.

Having missed out on the chance to contest the first AFL match at Perth Stadium, Fremantle has somewhat been compensated by being given the hosting rights for the first Western Derby at the new ground.

West Coast’s turn to host the Derby will come in Round 20; both Western Derbies will take place on the Sunday afternoon.

Port Adelaide will be the home team in the first of the two Showdowns at the Oval, but it won’t come until Round 8, which is later than usual. The Crows’ home game is also in Round 20; both matches have been scheduled for the Saturday twilight timeslot.

The Commonwealth Games, which requires the use of Metricon Stadium for its athletics events as well as the Opening and Closing Ceremonies, will force the Gold Coast Suns away from home for the first half of the season.

Thus, the first QClash will come in Round 5 at the Gabba before the Suns get hosting rights in their final home game of the season in the penultimate round.

And last but not least, the first of the Sydney Derbies will be in Round 3 at the SCG, with this to be the Giants’ only presence in Sydney in the first five rounds due to Spotless Stadium’s required use by the Sydney Royal Easter Show.

Like the Suns, the Giants will have to wait until the penultimate round to host the return Derby, which will also double as their final home game of the season.

Now that the 2018 AFL fixture has been released, fans are now circling some all-important dates on their calendars to ensure that they don’t miss the best matches next season.