Forty seven AFL Premiership matches will be played at Etihad Stadium in 2012, including nine Friday night matches.

Etihad Stadium’s season opener will be between North Melbourne and Essendon on Saturday 31 March at the new time slot of 7.40pm.

The first Friday night match may be described as the ‘Ross Lyon match’ on Friday 20 April. The Round 4 encounter will see Fremantle visit the venue with Lyon as coach, against his old club St Kilda.

Some expected early high drawing matches will include the Round 6 Western Bulldogs v Collingwood match on Friday 4 May and Carlton v Geelong on Friday 8 June.

The venue will again host the now ‘traditional’ Monday night encounter between St Kilda and Carlton, which will wrap up Round 7 on Monday 14 May.

Later in the season will see Geelong v Essendon clash in Round 17 on Friday 20 July while the following week Essendon will again be in action, against Hawthorn, also on the Friday night.

As has been the case recently, the AFL has released a 'floating' fixture for Round 23. While the teams and venues are set, the timeslot will be determined at a later date.

There will be some variations to starting times of matches in 2012.

The opening bounce for Friday night matches will be 7.50pm. There will be a new starting time of 1.45pm on a Saturday afternoon for some matches while Saturday night matches in Melbourne will commence at 7.40pm. (Please see the draw for additional information).