Fremantle have announced their new NAB AFL Women’s senior coach for the next two seasons, with current WA Football Commission female high performance coach and WA U18 women’s coach Trent Cooper taking the reins at the club until 2020.
Cooper arrives at Fremantle as the successor to inaugural AFLW coach Michelle Cowan.
The former Swan Districts and Peel Thunder player has an impressive coaching resume, including working as an assistant coach for the Swan Districts league team and coaching their colts to a premiership in 2014.
Since 2017, Cooper’s focus turned to the women’s game as the coach of the WA U18 women’s team and commencing his role in women’s high performance with the WAFC.
A long time Freo fan, Cooper was delighted to join the club at the helm of the AFLW team.
“I’m very excited. Women’s football is a quickly growing area,” Cooper said.
“I’m really looking forward to working with the girls down at Freo and looking for some success fairly quickly.”
Due to his work in women’s football, Cooper has already formed relationships with a handful of current Freo players as well as many from the upcoming 2018 draft class.
Cooper is excited about the talent coming through in WA and is looking forward to Fremantle investing in this talent through the draft, which is set to be held in October.
“The WAFC’s high performance program includes a lot of the mature age players who Freo will be looking to draft for the 2019 season,” Cooper said.
“And then specifically with the 18s, some of the talent coming through is quite exciting and no doubt some of those girls will be on the list for next year.”
Cooper’s signing caps off a big week for Freo’s AFLW team, with all of the club’s 20 required players re-signing with the club on Monday, including captain Kara Donnellan and the past two fairest and best winners in Ebony Antonio and Dana Hooker.
“It’s a good list. There’s been a lot of changes to a lot of other clubs and the stability we have at Fremantle is definitely one of the advantages that we’ve got this year,” Cooper said.
Donnellan, who worked with Cooper during his time at Swan Districts, was thrilled with the appointment.
“I’m extremely pleased and happy to have Trent on board,” Donnellan said.
“I did a couple of pre-seasons with Trent when he was head coach of the colts. The stuff I’ve already learnt from him over the years has been really good and I’m really excited to see what else we can all learn off him.
“Over the past couple of years he’s really invested himself in the women’s game and continually worked on how to coach the women’s game, as there’s a lot of differences to the men’s.
“I’m just really excited to learn off him, learn new things and for all of the girls to thrive off having a new coach on board.”
Fremantle’s general manager of football operations Chris Bond welcomed Cooper on board.
“We advertised for the role in a formal process for the recruitment of the AFLW coach,” Bond said.
“We’re delighted to secure the services of Trent, who has a teaching background and strong experience in not only coaching but coaching women’s football.”
