Flanagan has left her Canberra Strikers, for now, to give herself a chance to force her way back into the green and gold for the Tokyo Olympic Games in 2020.

"I’ve got to give it a pretty red-hot crack this year and that will be a big indicator going forward if I make the squad or not," Flanagan she told The Sydney Morning Herald.

"I thought I just needed to, knowing how I played last year with Canberra, I needed to try something different this year. 

"I don’t see it as a long-term thing, it’s just something I wanted to try this year," she said.

The AHL has previously been a two-week competition held at the Hockey Australia headquarters in Perth for the last three years.

However, it will now move to a home-and-away format played over four weekends beginning in Sydney on October 6.

Flanagan won't be to wait long to play in Canberra as they host AHL matches for the first time in six years on October 20.

Flanagan will travel to Perth in a fortnight for a Hockeyroos pre-World Cup camp.