Inaugural Fremantle Dockers CEO | David Hatt (22.09.2026)

Mark Duffield (0:07)

A slightly different version of the Fremantle team song to the one that David Hatt oversaw when he was the inaugural CEO of the club. But David Hatt joins us on the show now. Hattie, welcome.

David Hatt (0:19)

Oh, thank you very much.

Mark Duffield (0:21)

Hey, tell us, what were you thinking? And I know you're still very much a Dockers supporter. What were you thinking at half time on Friday?

David Hatt (0:31)

I was looking for a private place to go away and suck my thumb or something, because things were not going particularly well.

But I did have faith because they've done it so often this year. I thought Fremantle would be able to come back from behind and snatch a win, because I thought perhaps the Swans were starting to get a little tired. They were running on a motion for two or three weeks there, and it played particularly well. But yeah, Fremantle got the job done, which is good. And their last quarter was outstanding, I thought. The general nature of their play lifted, and they were clearly probably fitter at the end than the Swans.

Mark Duffield (1:16)

Now, you were the CEO at the club when Justin Longmuir arrived as a skinny, gangly teenager, number two pick in the, I think it was the 1998 draft. What were your memories of Justin?

David Hatt (1:31)

Well, he was quiet, measured, sort of young fellow.

His older brother, I think Troy, was playing for Melbourne at the time, and people said that they were a similar ilk. They were boys from the Bush, Wongan Ballardger area, if I'm correct, in my memory. But Jason fitted in well. He was a very conscientious and diligent player who always, you know, in a vertical, did the right thing on and off the field. And yeah, you're right. He was tall and gangly. And so he wasn't going to be the world's number one in five minutes, but he developed well. He played to the full potential that he had. And yeah, he was an exemplary player. You couldn't find anything wrong with him. And his goal after the siren to get Fremantle into their first final was evidence of the steel that he's actually got, that he doesn't necessarily wear on his shoulder.

But that ball never looked like missing, so I don't think I'll ever forget it.

Yeah, Justin was the man for the moment, and I think he's the man for the moment in the current environment.

Mark Duffield (2:51)

What was your vision for the Fremantle Football Club? When you became the CEO, you were operating out of an office in Market Street. There was no headquarters, per se. You were actually still looking for a training ground as South Fremantle and East Fremantle haggled over whether you would be allowed to train there. What was your vision for the Fremantle Dockers?

David Hatt (3:14)

Well, the first thing was to survive, because unlike other new franchises, we had very little in the way of financial resources. We didn't have a ground, as you've pointed out, to train on. We didn't have change rooms to be in. I mean, we ended up initially quite often at the John Curtin High School using the kids' lockers and training on their oval where they are in Fremantle.

Yeah, just to survive. We didn't obviously have the sort of membership base that we thought we might have got initially. There were a whole bunch of Fremantle players, or Fremantle-oriented players, who were very prominent in the West Coast Eagles. There was no welcoming met out for us necessarily all over Fremantle and its immediate suburbs, but we thought we knew that we could change that once we got a profile. And once our membership base was started, and we got into country areas that we didn't think we'd be able to get into.

So we wanted to be a club that actually had or capitalized on Fremantle's general popularity regarding football, and has been obviously for well over 100 years. Fremantle is synonymous through East and South Fremantle's performance. But originally, the old Fremantle Football Club in the late 19th, early 20th century was very, very prominent, and we knew that there was a base there for us. But it was going to take a lot of work, and it did take a lot of work.

Mark Duffield (5:06)

So the Fremantle Football Club will turn over somewhere in the region of $80 million this year. Can you remember what your financial turnover was in 1995?

David Hatt (5:17)

Well, it had an 8 in it, but that was the only number.

It was around $8 million, and that came from our initial sponsorships and our initial memberships, Harbour Masters and so on, that people were very generously giving to us. So we did survive and continue to survive, but it was a real struggle, not just because we were new and had no success, but at that stage, I think people forget that the biggest act in town was West Coast, and they were flying high, so to speak, premierships and a huge membership after their initial difficult years. So yeah, the market was pretty difficult. The whole, the West Coast in particular, in both the normal, the general community and in the financial community was very difficult for us to get traction early. But that changed reasonably quickly, and I'm pleased to say that, yeah, ten times now bigger in financial terms is about how I would have estimated it.