Peter Bell has shared an insight into his new role at Fremantle – declaring he’s excited to branch out and explore new challenges.
As announced earlier this week, Bell is making the move from Executive General Manager of Football to EGM of Football Talent, Strategy and Special Projects.
Current Fremantle Chief Operating Officer Joe Brierty will take over as Fremantle’s EGM of Football.
“I’m excited... it’s going to be a good outcome for the Club,” Bell told SEN WA Breakfast.
“Joe (Brierty) is a really experienced footy operations leader, doing it for 10 years before he moved to the Chief Operating Officer position.
“I’ve led (the football department) for five years. There are parts of my remit in football that will remain, that I’m really passionate about and that are really important. That is football talent – both on-field and off field – across both the AFL and AFLW programs.”
Bell explained the importance of staying involved in the football department, while keeping a close watch on future talent.
“I’ll step away, but not right away, because it’s important that I remain connected to how we’re performing and how our players are performing,” said Bell.
“But another part I’m really excited about is what we term ‘pro scouting’. That is beefing up our ability to go watch other teams and other players.
“That is something David Walls (Fremantle Head of Player Personnel) and his team have done really well but seeing in an era of increased player movement, we need to enhance our resourcing in that area.
“Trades take – and this might be a surprise to some people – they take years to work through so you need to be doing the work really, really early.
“Part of that is making sure that you have elite coverage of the players that you might be interested in.”
Player retention and overseeing list management will remain part of Bell’s portfolio.
“We’re not an outlier in the competition for players leaving,” Bell said.
“Some of them we’ve been absolutely encouraging them to go and pursue opportunities. Some of them are players we’d have liked to have kept also – I’m not trying to avoid that.
“For those players that have left that we would have preferred to keep, I think we all have to wear that responsibility. It’s what you then do from that situation.
“Adam Cerra is a player we would have liked to have kept. In the end we turned Adam into Jye Amiss. Brad Hill would have been nice to have on the list, but we turned that into Caleb Serong.
“They’re the challenges you have in football and it’s going to become more and more prevalent.
“You look at Collingwood - who are premiers - and they trade a premiership player a couple of weeks after he’s played in a premiership and trade out their vice-captain so it does happen.”
Bell will also push his expertise into new areas with the special projects on his agenda including enhancing Fremantle’s training facility at Cockburn.
“That could be a pretty big project that entails Federal money, State (Government) money, Local Government money, private money to deliver a big outcome for the Club, the community and also obviously from a football perspective,” Bell said.
“That’s something I’m really excited to be doing. I’m going to need some support in that because obviously that’s something that would be new to me. But that’s the philosophy behind this move.”
