- published: 20 Feb 2016
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The Australian Football League pre-season competition, which is known at present as the NAB Cup, is a competition held before the beginning of the Australian Football League (AFL) premiership season. It is currently a four round competition held before the start of the premiership season, involving the 18 AFL clubs.
Prior to 2011, the competition had been played as a simple sixteen-team knockout tournament; however, the expansion of the league to seventeen teams (and eighteen for 2012) forced a change of format. Under the current format, the first round sees the eighteen teams divided into six pools of three teams; each pool then plays a round robin of lightning matches on a single night. Each team then plays two full-length matches over the following two weekends, and the two teams with the best records over the four matches will play off in a Grand Final.
Most games, including the final, are night matches. Normal games are typically played slightly short of full length (quarters lasting 17½ or 18 minutes plus time on instead of the normal 20), and with an extended interchange bench of six or eight players to offer less physically demanding conditions for the pre-season games. Lightning matches are played over two halves of 20 minutes plus time on.