Dermott Brereton
Encyclopedia
Dermott Hugh Brereton is a former Australian rules football
Australian rules football
Australian rules football, officially known as Australian football, also called football, Aussie rules or footy is a sport played between two teams of 22 players on either...

 player in the Australian Football League
Australian Football League
The Australian Football League is both the governing body and the major professional competition in the sport of Australian rules football...

, regarded as one of the greatest players of his generation. Of Irish
Irish people
The Irish people are an ethnic group who originate in Ireland, an island in northwestern Europe. Ireland has been populated for around 9,000 years , with the Irish people's earliest ancestors recorded having legends of being descended from groups such as the Nemedians, Fomorians, Fir Bolg, Tuatha...

 descent (his parents migrated from Ireland before his birth), he is known for his aggressive style of play. Brereton kicked
Kick (football)
Kicking is a method used by many types of football, including:* Association football* Australian rules football* International rules football* American football* Canadian football* Gaelic football* Rugby league* Rugby union...

 464 goals and played in five Premierships for during his 211-game career. He is a former Director of the Hawthorn Football Club and is currently a television presenter on the Nine Network
Nine Network
The Nine Network , is an Australian television network with headquarters based in Willoughby, a suburb located on the North Shore of Sydney. For 50 years since television's inception in Australia, between 1956 and 2006, it was the most watched television network in Australia...

.

Hawthorn (1982–1992)

Dermott Brereton featured on the cover of the "Inside the Battle of '89" DVD in memorable moment pose after recovering from a solid Mark Yeates
Mark Yeates (Australian rules footballer)
Mark Yeates is a former Australian rules footballer who played with Geelong in the Victorian Football League during the 1980s....

 shirtfront. Dermott, nickname
Nickname
A nickname is "a usually familiar or humorous but sometimes pointed or cruel name given to a person or place, as a supposedly appropriate replacement for or addition to the proper name.", or a name similar in origin and pronunciation from the original name....

d The Kid, played most of his career (189 games and 427 goals) in the centre half forward position at the Hawthorn Football Club
Hawthorn Football Club
The Hawthorn Football Club, nicknamed the Hawks, is a professional Australian rules football club in the Australian Football League . The club, founded in 1902, is the youngest of the Victorian-based teams in the AFL. The team play in Brown & Gold vertically striped guernseys...

, where he formed part of a potent forward line that included champion players such as Jason Dunstall
Jason Dunstall
Jason Hadfield Dunstall is a former Australian rules football player for the Hawthorn Football Club of the AFL. He is the third greatest goalkicker in the history of the VFL/AFL. Dunstall is regarded as one of the greatest full-forwards to have ever played, kicking 1254 goals, a feat only...

.

He debuted as a young man with red hair
Red hair
Red hair occurs on approximately 1–2% of the human population. It occurs more frequently in people of northern or western European ancestry, and less frequently in other populations...

 which he later dyed
Hair coloring
Hair coloring is the practice of changing the color of hair. Common reasons are to cover gray hair, to change to a color regarded as more fashionable or desirable, and to restore the original hair color after it has been discolored by hairdressing processes or sun bleaching...

 blonde.
His debut was against North Melbourne in the 1982 finals series - he kicked five goals and assisted in a few more.

While he played the game he had a reputation as a tough man, and as a big game performer was an important player in a number of Hawthorn's grand final teams during the 1980s (including premierships in 1983, 1986, 1988, 1989 and 1991).

Brereton was known for his bustling style and strong marking
Mark (Australian football)
A mark is a skill in Australian rules football where a player cleanly catches a kicked ball that has travelled more than 15 metres without anyone else touching it or the ball hitting the ground....

 abilities and off the ball scuffles.

He won Hawthorn's Best and Fairest
Peter Crimmins Medal
The Peter Crimmins Medal is an Australian rules football award given to the player from the Hawthorn Football Club deemed best and fairest for the season.Peter Crimmins was a rover for Hawthorn, playing 1966-1975...

 award in 1985 and was the team's leading goalkicker in the same year. He achieved All-Australian status in 1985. He kicked a then record 8 goals in the 1985 Grand Final
1985 VFL Grand Final
The 1985 VFL Grand Final was an Australian rules football game contested between the Essendon Football Club and Hawthorn Football Club, held at the Melbourne Cricket Ground in Melbourne on 28 September 1985. It was the 89th annual Grand Final of the Victorian Football League, staged to determine...

.

Having bulked up over his career, Brereton became a football punisher and was known for his aggressive hip and shoulder bumps on running players. His targeting of other players by this method led to the charging rule being instigated to protect players whose intention was to focus on the ball.

A famous incident in 1988 involved Hawthorn's rival Essendon
Essendon Football Club
The Essendon Football Club, nicknamed The Bombers, is an Australian rules football club which plays in the Australian Football League...

 at Waverley Park
Waverley Park
Waverley Park was an Australian rules football stadium in Mulgrave, Victoria, Australia. For most of its history, its purpose was as a neutral venue and used by all Victorian based Victorian Football League/Australian Football League clubs. However, during the 1990s it became the home ground of...

. Brereton ran through the three quarter time huddle much to the surprise of the Bomber players causing a scuffle to break out. This incident was in retaliation to a free kick paid against Brereton for kissing Essendon's Billy Duckworth
Billy Duckworth
Bill Duckworth is a former Australian rules footballer who played with Essendon in the VFL. He is best known for winning the 1984 Norm Smith Medal. His brother John also played league football....

 while Jason Dunstall
Jason Dunstall
Jason Hadfield Dunstall is a former Australian rules football player for the Hawthorn Football Club of the AFL. He is the third greatest goalkicker in the history of the VFL/AFL. Dunstall is regarded as one of the greatest full-forwards to have ever played, kicking 1254 goals, a feat only...

 lined up for goal. Dunstall kicked the goal but due to Brereton's indiscretion, the goal was disallowed. Brereton, fuming, ran through Essendon's huddle to prove a point. Post match, Essendon's coach, Kevin Sheedy shrugged off the event as insignificant, quipping, "Just another mad Irishman!"

Perhaps the most memorable moment of his career was the 1989 VFL Grand Final
1989 VFL Grand Final
The 1989 VFL Grand Final was an Australian rules football game contested between the Hawthorn Football Club and the Geelong Football Club, held at the Melbourne Cricket Ground in Melbourne on 30 September 1989. It was the 93rd annual Grand Final of the Victorian Football League, staged to determine...

 that was featured in a Toyota Memorable Moments
Toyota Memorable Moments
The Toyota Memorable Moments series is a series of television advertisements produced over several years for the Australian Football League by its major sponsor, Toyota....

 television commercial. In one of the toughest grand finals in the league's history, Brereton was lined up at the centre bounce by Geelong Football Club's Mark Yeates
Mark Yeates (Australian rules footballer)
Mark Yeates is a former Australian rules footballer who played with Geelong in the Victorian Football League during the 1980s....

 and hit with a solid shirtfront. Severely winded and concussed, he was attended to by trainers. He began to vomit before jogging back into the play. Only minutes later in the game, he marked and kicked an inspirational goal. He would finish with three goals in a game that Hawthorn would win by six points. He was later diagnosed with broken ribs.

During his career at Hawthorn, Brereton was selected to play representative State of Origin
Interstate matches in Australian rules football
Australian rules football matches between teams representing Australian colonies/states and territories have been held since 1879. For most of the 20th century, the absence of a national club competition and international matches meant that football games between state representative teams were...

 football for Victoria nine times and kicked a total of 18 goals.

Brereton's physical style of play came at a cost. By the end of 1992, he was suffering from crippling chronic hip pain and struggled to make a regular appearance. At the advice of his club, he retired that year.

Sydney Swans (1993–1994)

During 1993, Brereton began to recover from the injuries that plagued his career at Hawthorn and expressed his intention to make a return to the game. The struggling Sydney Swans
Sydney Swans
The Sydney Swans Football Club is an Australian rules football club which plays in the Australian Football League . The club is based in Sydney, New South Wales. The club, founded in 1874, was known as the South Melbourne Football Club until it relocated to Sydney in 1982 to become the Sydney...

, in need of a big-name player capable of helping to turn around the team's performance, drafted him for the 1994 season. Moving to New South Wales
New South Wales
New South Wales is a state of :Australia, located in the east of the country. It is bordered by Queensland, Victoria and South Australia to the north, south and west respectively. To the east, the state is bordered by the Tasman Sea, which forms part of the Pacific Ocean. New South Wales...

, he played only seven games as suspensions prevented him from regaining peak form. His fame in Victoria was not equalled in New South Wales and he also failed to have any on-field impact on the Swans' fortunes.

Brereton's most notable act as a Swan was stomping on Hawthorn player Rayden Tallis
Rayden Tallis
Rayden Tallis is a former Australian rules footballer who played with Hawthorn in the AFL.Tallis made his Hawthorn debut in 1994 and earned a Rising Star nomination late in the season. He usually played in the back pocket but was also used through the midfield...

' head while Tallis was on the ground in a pre-season game, earning him a seven-match suspension. He would receive another seven-week suspension in that same year when Richmond's Tony Free
Tony Free
Tony Free is a former Australian rules football player who played in the VFL/AFL between 1987 and 1996 for the Richmond Football Club.- References :* Hogan P: The Tigers Of Old , Richmond FC, Melbourne 1996...

 had his jaw broken with an alleged 'karate chop' by Brereton. His only other moment of note was being flattened by West Coast Eagles' captain John Worsfold
John Worsfold
John Worsfold is a former Australian rules footballer who represented in the West Australian Football League and the West Coast Eagles in the Victorian Football League/Australian Football League . He also represented Western Australia in State of Origin matches...

. The Swans delisted Brereton the same year.

Collingwood (1995)

Still wanting to perform at the highest level, Brereton worked on his fitness and once again made himself available for the draft.

Collingwood
Collingwood Football Club
The Collingwood Football Club, nicknamed The Magpies, is an Australian rules football club which plays in the Australian Football League...

 took a gamble on him; clubs are generally loathe to recruit players above 30. The Collingwood experiment was slightly more successful than his stint at Sydney and in 15 games he kicked a total of 30 goals, ending his career at the end of 1995.

Post-football

After a lack of success in his returns from retirement, Brereton announced his intention to retire from elite football in 1995. In 1996 he returned to Frankston Rovers (now Frankston Bombers), where he had his cheekbone broken by a Dromana player in the second round of the season. He played a handful of games before going into retirement proper at the conclusion of the season.

Brereton was inducted into the Hawthorn Team of the Century, as well as the Australian Football Hall of Fame
Australian Football Hall of Fame
The Australian Football Hall of Fame was established in 1996, the Centenary year of the Australian Football League, to help recognise the contributions made to the sport of Australian rules football by players, umpires, media personalities, coaches and administrators. It was initially established...

. He is also a member of the Mornington Peninsula Nepean Football League
Mornington Peninsula Nepean Football League
The Mornington Peninsula Nepean Football League is an Australian rules football competition, governed by the Victorian Country Football League. The MPNFL contains teams near the south eastern region of Victoria, Australia...

 Hall of Fame.

His desire to continue playing football actively has seen him participate in the AFL Legends Match on several occasions. Each time his lack of fitness is the focus of much mirth by the commentary team.

On 8 December 1997, he was appointed as a Director of the Hawthorn Football Club and served for just over 8 years before retiring on 29 March 2006. One of the most notable incidents during his term as director was his alleged involvement in the run-up to a bench-clearing brawl between Hawthorn and Essendon in a 2004 encounter that became known as the Line in the Sand Match
Line in the Sand Match
Line in the Sand match is the unofficial title of the infamous Round 11, 2004 match between Australian football clubs ' and ' played at the MCG on Saturday, 5 June 2004....

. During halftime, just before the brawl, Brereton had reportedly told Hawthorn players to "draw a line in the sand" and take a physical stand against Essendon; he denied making that particular remark, but admitted to telling senior players "to stand up to any Essendon aggression".

In 2006, he began playing in the Yarra Valley Mountain District Football League
Yarra Valley Mountain District Football League
The Yarra Valley Mountain District Football League is an Australian rules football and netball competition based in Victoria to the east and northeast of Melbourne.-History:...

 with Division 1 club Woori Yallock alongside 1995 Collingwood team mate Damien Monkhorst, kicking 2 goals on debut.

Commentary career

From quite early in his playing career, Brereton pursued media appearances in anticipation of joining the media full-time when he retired. During the 1980s, he had a six-year stint on a morning show hosted by veteran television performer, Ernie Sigley
Ernie Sigley
Ernest William "Ernie" Sigley is an enduring Australian entertainment personality known for his square-rimmed spectacles, the gap between his front teeth and his slapstick approach to comedy.-Radio career:...

, who mentored the ambitious Brereton. In the early 1990s, he joined Channel Nine when the network began showing interest in Australian football for the first time in more than twenty years. He was one of the original panellists when the long-running The AFL Footy Show
The AFL Footy Show
The Footy Show is a Logie Award winning Australian sports television program, shown on the Nine Network and its affiliates.This show, which is dedicated to the AFL and Australian rules football, made its debut on 24 March 1994 at the same time as the other version which relates to the NRL and rugby...

began in 1994 and also wrote in The Age
The Age
The Age is a daily broadsheet newspaper, which has been published in Melbourne, Australia since 1854. Owned and published by Fairfax Media, The Age primarily serves Victoria, but is also available for purchase in Tasmania, the Australian Capital Territory and border regions of South Australia and...

. In 2000 he moved to the Nine Network
Nine Network
The Nine Network , is an Australian television network with headquarters based in Willoughby, a suburb located on the North Shore of Sydney. For 50 years since television's inception in Australia, between 1956 and 2006, it was the most watched television network in Australia...

 to provide match commentary on AFL matches when the network commenced its AFL coverage. He continued to be a regular panellist for The AFL Footy Show.

In 2004, Brereton hosted The Run Home radio show on Melbourne AM radio station SEN 1116
SEN 1116
SEN 1116 , the acronym standing for Sports Entertainment Network, is a commercial AM radio station based in Melbourne, Australia, operating on 1116 kHz...

 with Anthony Hudson
Anthony Hudson
For the footballer of the same name see Anthony Hudson Anthony Hudson is an Australian rules football commentator on both television and radio.-Early career:...

 and Matthew Hardy
Matthew Hardy
Matthew Hardy is a Melbourne-based comedian and comedy writer who was the first Australian to cement himself full-time on the UK live circuit, spending eight years there in the 1990s, including regular appearances at Jongleurs and The Comedy Store in Leicester Square.A regular at many international...

, but left due to a payment dispute. In previous years he has also co-hosted the breakfast show on Melbourne FM station Gold 104
3KZ
Gold 104.3 is a radio station broadcasting in Melbourne, Australia. Gold 104.3 is part of the Australian Radio Classic Hits Network and broadcasts on the 104.3 MHz frequency.- History :...

, and been a commentator on another FM station, Triple M
Triple M
The Triple M Network is an active rock radio network in Australia owned by media company Austereo, who also own the Today Network.- History :...

.

In 2005, he appeared in a Toyota Memorable Moments advertisement featuring Stephen Curry that satirised the famous 1989 Grand Final
AFL Grand Final
The AFL Grand Final is an annual Australian rules football match, traditionally held on the final Saturday in September at the Melbourne Cricket Ground in Melbourne, Australia to determine the Australian Football League premiership champions for that year...

 incident with Geelong
Geelong Football Club
The Geelong Football Club, nicknamed The Cats, is a professional Australian rules football club, named after and based in the city of Geelong, playing in the Australian Football League . The club has been the VFL/AFL premiers nine times, with a record equalling 3 in the AFL era. Geelong has also...

 player Mark Yeates
Mark Yeates (Australian rules footballer)
Mark Yeates is a former Australian rules footballer who played with Geelong in the Victorian Football League during the 1980s....

. In November of that year, Brereton was involved in an altercation with a group of young men.http://au.news.yahoo.com/051127/2/wzbn.html

In 2006, he made an appearance on Torvill and Dean's Dancing on Ice
Torvill and Dean's Dancing on Ice
Torvill and Dean's Dancing on Ice is an Australian reality television series which was based on the original British version, Dancing on Ice. The series premiered on the Nine Network on Tuesday, 11 July 2006 at , and involved celebrities ice dancing on a specially constructed ice rink located in...

.Brereton left the show early after injuring his biceps. In 2006 Brereton was sacked from Triple M due to low ratings.
In 2007 Brereton rejoined 1116 SEN to broadcast football, the same station he left two years earlier. He also presents on the Channel Nine holiday show Getaway.

In 2011, he ended his twenty year association with the Nine Network
Nine Network
The Nine Network , is an Australian television network with headquarters based in Willoughby, a suburb located on the North Shore of Sydney. For 50 years since television's inception in Australia, between 1956 and 2006, it was the most watched television network in Australia...

 and announced he would be joining Foxtel
Foxtel
Foxtel is an Australian pay television company, operating cable, direct broadcast satellite television and IPTV services. It was formed in 1995 through a joint venture established between Telstra and News Corporation....

 for the 2012 season. From 2012 onwards he will provide match commentary for Foxtel
Foxtel
Foxtel is an Australian pay television company, operating cable, direct broadcast satellite television and IPTV services. It was formed in 1995 through a joint venture established between Telstra and News Corporation....

 and host his own show on Thursday nights on Foxtel's new 24/7 AFL channel Fox Footy
Fox Footy
Fox Footy is an upcoming Australian Rules football subscription television channel dedicated to screening Australian rules football matches and related programming. It will be owned by Premier Media Group, operated out of their Melbourne based studios and available on Foxtel, Austar and Optus...

, set to launch on febuary 17 2012.

Video games

Brereton is the voice-over commentator for the AFL video game series
AFL (video game series)
The AFL video game series is a series of Australian rules football video games based on the AFL. Released originally by Beam Software, it has since been developed by several other game developers....

since 2002.

External links

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