"It's an all of club mentality." - Joe Brierty | Fremantle Executive GM of Football (23.09.2026)

Mark Duffield (0:00)

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Welcome back to the SENWA studio out here at Optus Stadium. Wednesday morning in Perth, leading in to the grand final, Fremantle versus Brisbane at the MCG on Saturday. There's a massive training session ahead of Fremantle at the Coburn Arc today. A couple of players to keep a close eye on, and their executive general manager of footy, Joe Brierty, has joined us on the show. Joe, welcome.

Joe Brierty (0:38)

Good day, Duff. Thanks for having me, mate.

Mark Duffield (0:40)

First of all, congratulations on making the big dance, mate. I think it's been a magnificent whole of club performance from Simon Garlick, the CEO, through Adam Beard, the strength and conditioning coach, through David Walls, the list builder, through yourself in the footy department, and of course, Justin Longmuir, who quite rightly got the gong as the AFL-CA's Coach of the Year last night. That must have been pleasing for you.

Joe Brierty (1:06)

No, look, I appreciate that, mate. It's obviously we've still got plenty of work ahead of us and excited for what's to come. And obviously really leaning into our preparations this week. But you're right. Look, it's an all of club mentality. And these things take a lot of time. And there's even many people that have come before that that have had a significant influence on the club and in particular since obviously Simon and Jale arrived in their roles. So really proud of the way in which everyone's lent in to their roles in our organisation. And we're lucky to have some really talented people and even our playing group. And you can package in the entire squad, but our leaders and the work that they've been doing over time to obviously put us in this position. But it's also something that we feel as though we want to be in this position for many years to come.

Mark Duffield (1:56)

Yeah, I did leave the most important people out, didn't I? The players, they basically are 85 to 90% of it.

And it's a case of preparing them well. So how has the week been so far, Joe? How is the feel around the club at the moment?

Joe Brierty (2:11)

Yeah, it's been really consistent, to be honest. It's been pretty well planned. I think there's been a bit of media about it. But there was. You have to be from WA in terms of understanding what it can look like and trying to get ahead of those things. Because there's an amount of work that goes into it. So people behind the scenes doing a lot of work obviously preparing to make sure that everything's in place and allowing the coaches and players in particular and performance health teams to really focus on executing their roles across the week. So we flew back on Saturday and then took the opportunity to come in on Sunday morning and do a recovery and get ahead of what the week would look like. There's obviously a fair few new elements that come into it. And then it was great that the AFL squad were able to head along and watch Peel's performance on on Sunday afternoon. And that was really pleasing to see the 14 players that represented Peel from a Fremantle perspective perform at a really high level. And then gave the players Monday off.

And then Tuesday kind of moved into our usual structure, where we go to our line work and then start to look at at Brisbane. And then into main training today. So just looking out the window now, it's amazing to see about 3,000 plus fans out there. Obviously really excited for the week ahead, which is a big part of it.

Mark Duffield (3:26)

So the big decision appears to be Brennan Cox or Oscar McDonald assuming that one of them can play and only one of them. And maybe the club has a different view on that. But how is Brennan Cox and are you confident that he is ready to go if you want to pick him?

Joe Brierty (3:44)

Yeah, definitely confident that he's ready to go if we need to pick him. And we'll work through that today.

Obviously, as we've talked about before, Oscar and Alex have performed really strongly, but Brennan's previously played really important roles against sides like Brisbane, obviously with the C3 tall structure that they have in place. So we'll look at what the best mix is and look, unfortunately, there's always hard luck stories when you go into Grand Finals and our availability has been at a really high level. So it's not just Brennan in those conversations. There will be a number of players that are being considered in terms of the make up of our final 23 And from a medical perspective, there aren't any concerns around anyone. So we'll have a really long match committee and decide on what the best make up is. But just proud of the way that those players on the periphery have allowed and supported the AFL team in their preparation and across the entire year. And Brennan sits in that bucket. And the way that he's carried himself is obviously disappointing. He wasn't selected on the weekend just gone. But we decided to pull him out from the appeal game and thought that having a seven-day break into the AFL, he was going to play and doing a big training session on Saturday, was best for his physical prep. So yeah, he's ready to go if selected.