Fremantle chief executive officer Simon Garlick is confident that the Club will return to the finals and stay there.
Garlick said the Club’s decision-making and youth are setting Fremantle up to compete consistently not only in 2024, but for the next decade.
“We understand, and the competition knows, that we’ve got an incredibly talented but young list,” Garlick told Mark Duffield on SEN WA Wednesday morning.
“We think we can use it to our advantage, with youth comes enthusiasm, excitement and dare, and that’s certainly how we are approaching season 2024.
“It sounds funny saying that the likes of Brayshaw and Serong are not the young ones given they are 23, 24, but even another 20 games experience for the young leaders, not to mention the likes of Josh Treacy, Jye Amiss, and Luke Jackson…the benefit of that is going to be significant this year.
“Our Club is unrelenting and unapologetic for making decisions that have set us up for sustained success.
“Whether that’s commercially or from a list management perspective, or the people we put in place, it’s all geared towards giving ourselves a chance to have a decade-long run at contending.
“You’ve seen it Duff (Mark Duffield), you know footy as well as anyone, they are the clubs that tend to win a flag or two along the way, those that give themselves that chance.
“So that’s what we’ll continue to do, and we won’t apologise for that, and that’s where we think we are heading and are really optimistic about.”
Garlick said that throughout the process of becoming Fremantle’s CEO in 2019, it was clear the Club already had a strong foundation in place.
“Understandably, you do a bit of due diligence and talk to a number of people that you trust, and it just became so clear to me that the foundations of our football Club are incredibly strong,” Garlick said.
“(Fremantle’s) membership was close to that of West Coast and Richmond (around 2010), and our average home ground attendance was very much similar to both of those clubs at that point in time.
“Both of those clubs since then and around that time have had sustained on-field success, and we’ve seen what their membership and home ground attendances have gone to, so it really is a preview of what we can achieve and what we can be as a Club.”
