Has an AFL game ever ended 43-42?
Yes. AFL has seen a final score of 43-42 3 times. It first happened on August 3, 1912, when Fitzroy beat Melbourne, and most recently on April 30, 2022, when Port Adelaide beat St Kilda.
That makes 43-42 the 1534th most common final score out of 6,607 that have ever occurred in AFL. One point away, 44-42 has happened 3 times and 43-43 has happened 2 times. At one point the score disappeared for 105 years, between 1917 and 2022.