THE AFL today announced it would retain the week's break introduced this year between the end of the Home and Away Season and the start to the Finals Series for the 2017 Toyota AFL Premiership Season.

THe AFL's view was that the bye strongly contributed to brilliant September football and allowed the best players to be as fit and well prepared as possible.

The 2017 bye week will be held between the final round of the Toyota AFL Premiership Season (August 25-27) and the opening to the Toyota AFL Finals Series (September 7-10), with the AFL again retaining the option to have a Thursday-night final (September 7) to open the major round.

The 2016 AFL Toyota finals series, was the most watched in the games history with a total of 18 million people tuning in on their televisions across the nine games.

More to follow.