Take advantage of this unique opportunity to grow your strategic leadership skills and learn from high profile leaders and coaches at the Fremantle Football Club while examining leadership and strategy from the inner sanctum of a professional sporting organisation.
Developed in partnership with the Fremantle Football Club and leading academics from Curtin University, this immersive two-day program is for forward-thinking individuals and organisations seeking to drive leadership excellence and capability within their teams and organisation.
The program will delve into the dynamic strategies, mindsets, motivations and tools used by the Fremantle Football Club’s management team to elevate club culture and ignite peak player performance both on and off the playing field in the nation’s biggest and most competitive professional sport.
Intensive learning co-designed by Curtin University and the Fremantle Football Club
This program will bring real-world experience and valuable insights from the boardroom and playing field. It will uncover the guiding principles used by the Fremantle Football Club in leading and developing players and employees in becoming a high performing football club.
About the facilitators
Simon Garlick
A former CEO of the Western Bulldogs (2010-2015), Simon was appointed CEO of Fremantle in November 2019 after serving as CEO of Bastion EBA (2015-2019), a division of Bastion Collective, Australia’s leading independent marketing, communications and commercial agency. Simon, who played a combined 181 games for Sydney and the Western Bulldogs (1994-2004), also has extensive experience as a director, with previous governance responsibility on the AFL Players’ Association board and as a Western Bulldogs board member. He has expertise in complex stakeholder management and engagement experience across governing bodies, local, state and federal governments, media and the negotiation of major commercial/sponsorship contracts with multinational corporations. Educated at St Kevin’s College in Melbourne, Simon has a BA Business Administration from the University of Western Sydney and an MBA from Victoria University.
Justin Longmuir
Justin has been the Fremantle Football Club’s AFL Senior Coach for the past four seasons since his appointment ahead of the 2019 season. A former player in the AFL, the number 2 draft pick in the 1998 National Draft returned to Fremantle after playing 139 games for the club between 1999 and 2007, with his playing career cut short at 26-years of age by a degenerative knee injury. A 10-year apprenticeship including senior assistant, assistant and development coaching roles at Fremantle (2010), West Coast (2011-2017) and Collingwood (2018-2019) led to Longmuir becoming the Club’s sixth senior coach in its 29-year history.
Angie Bain
Angie is a qualified counsellor and educator specialising in Wellbeing and Performance. Angie adopts a person-centred approach and draws on a variety of theoretical approaches as a means of achieving individual, team and organisational health and human performance. She has spent her professional career working in the Elite Sports inclusive of recent roles with the AFL Players Association (AFLPA), Australian Cricketer’s Association (ACA) and the Australian Hockey and Netball Teams in athlete development, wellbeing counselling and mental health case management. More recently she has been incorporating wellbeing initiatives, education and programs for staff and players at the Fremantle Dockers Football Club (AFL). With graduate and post graduate qualifications in sports science, sports psychology, coaching, career counselling and counselling she has a variety of expertise in maximising professional and personal performance, but also influences the work environment and strategic direction of an organisation in relation to health, wellbeing and organisational performance of its people.
Adam Beard
As one of the very first Directors of High Performance in North American sport (National Football League NFL, Major League Baseball, MLB), Dr. Beard is the current Director of Football Performance & Innovation at the Fremantle Dockers FC, following similar roles with the Chicago Cubs, Cleveland Browns, Welsh Rugby Union and the British & Irish Lions. An experienced Performance Director with a demonstrated history of proven results in the highest level of the professional sports industry. High level experience developing, guiding and leading High Performance Teams, areas and skills such as – Systems thinker, Overview Management, Organisational design, Performance Strategy and Benchmarking, Coaching, Research & Development. Strong Executive Management professional who has a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) from the Université de Lausanne’s Faculty of Biology and Medicine in Switzerland.
Peter Bell
Peter is a former Fremantle Dockers captain and dual premiership player with North Melbourne, past president of AFL Players’ Association, inaugural chairman of the AFL Players’ Trust and Australian Football Hall of Fame inductee. Peter started his 286-game AFL career for Fremantle in 1995 and completed his secondary education at Aquinas College and has a Bachelor of Laws from Melbourne University. After his playing career finished in 2008, Peter carved out a highly successful career as a businessman, radio broadcaster and sports commentator, before returning to the Fremantle Dockers as the Executive General Manager of Football.
Joe Brierty
Joe has more than 12 years’ experience in the AFL industry as a leader and administrator. He joined the Fremantle Dockers Football Club in 2010 and in that time, has managed a number of key areas across the Club’s football programs and administration including leadership and culture, strategy projects, governance and risk and integrity. Joe joined Fremantle’s Executive team in 2020 and currently oversees the Club’s operations including Culture, HR, Integrity, Facilities, IT, Strategic Projects and ESG portfolios. Joe completed his secondary education at Trinity College and has a Bachelor of Science (Health, Safety & Environment) from Curtin University
Dr Ben Thomas
Dr Ben Thomas has been a teaching and research academic based in Curtin’s Faculty of Business and Law since 2019. He teaches business strategy and start-up business planning within the Curtin MBA, undergraduate and postgraduate programs and is also the Lead Academic on Curtin’s start-up accelerator programs, Ignition and Accelerate. His research interests include wine industry innovation and wine tourism as well as building innovation and entrepreneurial capability within founders of early-stage ventures. Further, Ben has founder experience as a co-founder of Vine Collective, WA’s first solely online wine marketplace platform, and co-founder of the wine production company, Berserkr Wines.
