Dermott Brereton Biography: The Full Story of AFL’s Most Fearless Footballer, His Family Heartbreak, and Life After the Game

There are footballers who are good at their job. Then there are players who make the game feel like something else entirely — bigger, wilder, more alive. Dermott Brereton was the second kind. He was the guy who, after being shirtfronted at the centre bounce of the 1989 VFL Grand Final — cracked ribs, barely conscious, vomit on the ground — got back to his feet, jogged back into the game, took a mark, and kicked a goal. That moment alone would be enough to cement a legacy. But the Dermott Brereton biography is so much more than one grand final. It’s the story of a kid who grew up under the weight of a deeply troubled household, channelled every bit of that fire into a football career, changed the rules of the game with his physical style, built a second career in TV and radio that’s lasted just as long as his playing days, and then used his platform to talk about the things he knew too personally: trauma, mental health, and survival.

This is the complete story of Dermott Brereton — all of it.

Who Is Dermott Brereton? The Quick Version

Dermott Hugh Brereton is a former Australian rules footballer, AFL media personality, keynote speaker, and mental health advocate. He played 211 games across Hawthorn, Sydney Swans, and Collingwood, winning five premierships and kicking 464 career goals. He’s a member of the Australian Football Hall of Fame, a member of Hawthorn’s Team of the Century, and one of the most recognisable faces in Australian sports broadcasting.

Born on August 19, 1964, in Frankston, Victoria, Dermott is now 61 years old. He currently works as a Fox Footy commentator and SEN Radio analyst, and is a sought-after keynote speaker at corporate and sporting events across Australia.

Dermott Brereton at a Glance — Profile Snapshot

From Dublin to Frankston — The Irish Roots That Built a Melbourne Legend

Two Immigrants, One Dream: How the Brereton Family Arrived in Australia

If you want to understand Dermott Brereton, you have to start in Dublin. His father, Dermott Joseph Brereton, and his mother, Jean Nancy Austin, were both born in the Irish capital — two people from the same city, products of the same Catholic working-class world, who each separately made the enormous decision to emigrate to Australia. Dermott’s father arrived first, in 1958. Jean followed a year later. They met, they married, and they built a life in the southern suburbs of Melbourne.

It’s not a small thing, emigrating. You leave everything you know — family, community, culture, language rhythms — and you start again in a country that doesn’t owe you anything. That immigrant determination, that refusal to give up no matter what, found its way into their son in the most direct way possible.

Growing Up in Frankston: Beach Suburbs, Street Toughness, and a Father’s Shadow

Frankston in the 1960s and 1970s was a working-class coastal suburb — beachside in postcode only, with the kind of rough edges that tend to produce either survivors or casualties. Dermott grew up there alongside his brothers, David and Paul, navigating a childhood that was far more complicated than it appeared from the outside.

He attended Hampton High School, where his sporting talent became obvious almost immediately. By his teenage years, the local football scouts had already started paying attention to a naturally athletic kid who played with an intensity that didn’t quite belong in junior football.

A Childhood Shaped by Darkness and Resilience

The Truth About Dermott’s Father: Addiction, Abuse, and a Tragedy That Changed Everything

In 2010, Dermott sat down with Herald Sun journalist Mark Robinson and told the story he’d carried for years. His father — the man whose name he shares — struggled with serious substance addiction throughout Dermott’s life, ultimately battling cocaine dependency. The household was marked by physical abuse, a cycle of violence that Dermott later connected to his father’s own abuse at the hands of the Christian Brothers, the Catholic religious order with a dark history in both Ireland and Australia.

In 1993, Dermott’s father took his own life. It happened in the same year that Dermott was walking away from Hawthorn, dealing with chronic hip pain, and trying to figure out the next chapter. The timing was devastating. It wasn’t just grief — it was complicated, layered grief, the kind that comes with a relationship defined by both love and damage. Dermott has spoken about it with honesty that takes real courage, not for sympathy, but because he understood that staying silent about these things was part of what made them so destructive.

The Brother He Lost: Paul Brereton’s Suicide and the Weight Dermott Carries

Dermott’s brother Paul also died by suicide. That’s two of the people closest to him in childhood — his father and his brother — both gone in the same way. He has a third brother, David, though Dermott has indicated they’ve had a distant relationship over the years.

The losses Dermott has carried are not the kind you move past. You move forward with them. And the empathy he shows in his mental health work — the R U OK? podcast, the public speeches — makes far more sense when you know the weight he’s been carrying since long before he was famous.

How Trauma Forged One of AFL’s Toughest Competitors

It would be simplistic to draw a straight line between a painful childhood and a ferocious playing style, but it’d also be dishonest to pretend there isn’t a connection. Dermott played like a man with something to prove — to himself, to the world, maybe to people who weren’t watching anymore. The controlled aggression, the refusal to stay down, the sheer intensity of his presence on a football field all made more sense once you knew where he came from.

School, Sport, and the Scouts Who Came Knocking

Hampton High School and the Teenager Who Made Heads Turn

Dermott’s time at Hampton High School in Melbourne’s southeastern suburbs was where the footballer first started to take shape. He was an academically capable student but it was on the sporting field that he truly lit up. His size, his athleticism, and — perhaps most importantly — his instinctive competitiveness were impossible to ignore.

Frankston Rovers and the Draft That Started Everything

Before the big clubs came calling, Dermott played his junior football with the Frankston Rovers Football Club in the Mornington Peninsula Nepean Football League. It was there that Hawthorn’s talent scouts identified a young forward who had something extra. In 1982, Hawthorn drafted him — and he would repay their faith in one of the most spectacular ways the game had ever seen.

Hawthorn Football Club — Where a Legend Was Born

The Debut That Announced “The Kid” to the Football World

August 1982. Dermott Brereton was 17 years old. His debut came in the finals series, against North Melbourne in the first semi-final. Five goals. In his debut. In a final. That’s not a statement about a promising prospect — that’s a declaration that something special has arrived. In many ways, everything that followed was Dermott fulfilling the promise of that single afternoon.

He came back down to earth in the next week — picking up just three touches in a preliminary final loss to Carlton — but the game had seen enough. Hawthorn knew who they had.

Where Did the Nickname “The Kid” Actually Come From?

The nickname has a wonderfully mundane origin. Hawthorn’s reserves coach at the time, Des Meagher, was reportedly giving a spray to a player about not getting enough of the ball. The threat was roughly this: if you don’t lift, I’ll replace you with the kid. That kid was Dermott. It stuck. “The Kid” became the name fans chanted, the label media used, and eventually — after years of physical transformation — an ironic badge of honour for a man who’d become one of the most physically imposing players in the competition.

Building the Body of a Footballer: From Slim Teenager to Physical Force

The Dermott Brereton who debuted as a 17-year-old was lean and fast. The player who dominated the competition through the late 1980s was something altogether different. He had bulked up deliberately, adding muscle and mass to transform himself from a skilful forward into a genuine physical threat who could intimidate opponents before the ball even arrived. That transformation didn’t come without cost — it added load to joints that were already absorbing significant punishment every single week.

Dermott Brereton’s Playing Style — Brilliant, Brutal, and Unlike Anyone Else

What Made Him Such a Dangerous Centre Half-Forward

At his best, Dermott Brereton was a nightmare to play against. He had strong hands in the air and was a reliable, accurate kick for goal — particularly under pressure, which is exactly when most players want to be anywhere else. His centre half-forward game was built on physical presence, reading the ball’s flight, and the kind of competitive intensity that doesn’t get coached. You either have it or you don’t. Dermott had it in abundance.

He was also tactically smart about intimidation. He understood that football wasn’t just played with the body — it was played with the mind. Getting into an opponent’s head before the contest even started was part of his game, and he was exceptional at it.

The Charging Rule That Exists Because of Dermott Brereton

This is one of those facts that doesn’t get mentioned nearly enough: the AFL’s charging rule — designed to protect players who are committed to marking the ball — exists in large part because of Dermott Brereton. His calculated hip-and-shoulder bumps on players focused on the contest were so effective, and so legally ambiguous under the rules of the time, that the AFL was eventually forced to change the laws of the game. The rule that protects players today traces its lineage directly back to the chaos Brereton caused on football fields across Victoria.

Tribunal Visits, Suspensions, and the Price of Playing on the Edge

Dermott was suspended thirty times across his career. That is not a typo. He visited the AFL Tribunal so frequently that he probably knew the layout better than some of the staff. Some of the most memorable suspensions:

• Six matches for rendering St Kilda’s Danny Frawley unconscious behind play in 1988
• Four weeks for clubbing Garry Lyon to the back of the head after Lyon marked in front of him in 1990
• Five weeks for knocking out Adelaide captain Chris McDermott in the Crows’ very first AFL game in 1991
• Three separate charges from the 1985 Grand Final — a game in which he also kicked eight goals
• Two seven-week bans during his single season with Sydney Swans in 1994

Despite all of it, Dermott always maintained his on-field conduct was calculated, not reckless. “You’d look to take somebody out, and wilfully take them out, within the rules,” he famously explained. The important words there are “within the rules” — most of the time, he was right.

The Five Premierships — Hawthorn’s Golden Era and Dermott’s Role in It

1983, 1986, 1988 — The Early Championships That Built a Dynasty

Dermott won his first premiership in just his second season, 1983, as part of a Hawthorn side that was rapidly establishing itself as the dominant force in Victorian football. He was barely 19. Over the following years, that Hawthorn machine became arguably the greatest football dynasty the VFL/AFL has seen, winning flags in 1983, 1986, 1988, 1989, and 1991. Dermott was central to all five. He won Hawthorn’s Best and Fairest award in 1985, led the club in goal kicking that same year with 58 goals, and earned All-Australian selection in 1985, 1986, and 1988.

The 1989 VFL Grand Final: One of the Greatest Stories in Australian Sport

You could write an entire article just about the 1989 VFL Grand Final and it wouldn’t feel like enough. It remains one of the most discussed, most replayed, most emotionally charged games in Australian football history — and Dermott Brereton’s story within it is the story most people know. But most people only know part of it.

The Alan Jeans Pre-Game Speech That Lit a Fire in Dermott

Before a ball was bounced, Hawthorn coach Alan Jeans — one of the most respected coaching minds the game has ever produced — delivered a pre-match address that Dermott later described as both inspiring and infuriating. Jeans, understanding what drove his star centre half-forward, reportedly laid Dermott’s family history bare in front of the entire team, using personal knowledge of his background to challenge him and fire him up. Dermott has admitted the speech angered him deeply — he felt his coach was using his private pain as a tool. He walked onto the MCG with blood boiling.

Mark Yeates, a Shirtfront, and a Man Who Refused to Stay Down

At the opening bounce, Geelong’s Mark Yeates made a decision. With Dermott Brereton running toward the contest, Yeates turned and ran through him with a solid shirtfront — a legal and devastating full-body collision. Dermott hit the ground severely concussed and winded. He vomited on the ground. Trainers attended to him. Every commentator in the country assumed he was done for the day.

He wasn’t done.

He got up. He jogged back into the play. And minutes later, he took a mark and kicked a goal. He’d finish the game with three goals in a six-point Hawthorn win. Medical examination afterward confirmed he’d played the entire game with broken ribs.

The moment was immortalised in a Toyota Memorable Moments television commercial and remains one of the defining images of Australian football courage. It’s not just a sports story. It’s a story about what people are capable of when they refuse to accept that they’re finished.

1991 — The Final Flag Before the Body Gave Out

Hawthorn’s 1991 premiership was Dermott’s fifth and final. By this point his body was beginning to accumulate the damage of a decade of brutal football. He’d played 17 games that season — a reduced load — but still contributed at the highest level when it counted. By the end of 1992, chronic hip pain had become so severe that he missed the entire season. When Hawthorn offered him a minimum-wage contract at season’s end, he walked.

The Chaos, the Controversy, and the Moments Nobody Could Believe

Kissing Billy Duckworth and Running Through Essendon’s Huddle

If you want to understand Dermott Brereton the provocateur, look no further than a 1988 game against Essendon at Waverley Park. During the game, with Jason Dunstall lining up for goal, Dermott kissed Essendon’s Billy Duckworth on the face — presumably to distract the opposition and give Dunstall a free kick. A free kick was duly paid against Dermott. The goal was disallowed.

Furious at the injustice of his own distraction backfiring, Dermott did what seemed logical to him in the moment: he ran straight through Essendon’s three-quarter-time huddle, scattering startled Bomber players in all directions. Essendon coach Kevin Sheedy, ever the pragmatist, dismissed the entire incident with a single line: “Just another mad Irishman.”

It’s genuinely one of the funniest moments in AFL history.

The Karate Chop, the Stomping, and a Tribunal That Knew His Name by Heart

His 1994 season with Sydney Swans is probably the most chaotic twelve months of his professional life. Within a single pre-season game, he stomped on former Hawthorn teammate Rayden Tallis’s head while Tallis lay on the ground — earning a seven-game suspension. Later that same year, Richmond’s Tony Free had his jaw broken by what the press described as a “karate chop” from Brereton — earning him another seven-week ban. Two seven-week bans in one year. Ron Barassi, who had recruited Dermott as a game-changer for the Swans, labelled the entire experiment a disappointment.

The Most Notorious Suspensions of His Career

Thirty suspensions across a career is a remarkable number, but it’s worth noting that AFL football in the 1980s was a significantly more physical, less regulated environment than the game played today. Many of what Dermott did was considered normal within the culture of the era — brutal by modern standards, but understood within the game as it was played then. That context doesn’t excuse everything, but it matters for understanding who he was and how he was seen by his peers.

Leaving Hawthorn — The Pay Dispute That Ended an Era

Why Dermott Brereton Walked Out on the Club That Made Him

When Hawthorn offered Dermott a minimum-wage contract at the end of the 1993 season — a season he’d missed entirely due to hip injury — he took it as an insult. He hadn’t been forced to retire. He still believed he could play. And the offer, in his view, reflected a club that no longer valued what he’d given them. In October 1993, he walked. He later described the offer as insulting. For a player who’d won five premierships and helped define an era, it’s hard to argue with that assessment.

Sydney Swans: The Big-Name Experiment That Fell Apart

The Sydney Swans, struggling for results and desperately seeking star power to fill seats at the SCG, signed Dermott for the 1994 season on a lucrative three-year contract. Coach Ron Barassi wanted him as a potential club captain and crowd-puller. What they got instead was a series of tribunal appearances and more time in the stands than on the field. His fame in Victoria simply didn’t translate north of the Murray, and the Swans declined to offer him a contract extension.

One Last Season at Collingwood and a Quiet Farewell to Playing

Collingwood picked up Dermott in the pre-season draft for 1995 — a gamble on a 30-year-old with a complicated reputation. The Magpies got the better deal than Sydney had. In 15 games, Dermott kicked 30 goals and played an influential role in the development of young key forward Saverio Rocca. Many observers credited his mentorship as a significant factor in Rocca’s career-best 1995 season. Dermott’s final AFL game was at the SCG in Round 22, 1995. He kicked three goals in a loss. Then he hung up the boots for good.

Post-Football Honours — The Legacy of a Five-Premiership Hero

Australian Football Hall of Fame Induction

Dermott Brereton was inducted into the Australian Football Hall of Fame in 1999, four years after retirement. The induction recognised not just his statistics — 211 games, 464 goals, five premierships — but his status as one of the most significant players of his generation. He was later elevated to Legend status, the Hall’s highest honour.

Hawthorn Team of the Century Recognition

In 2001, Dermott was named in Hawthorn Football Club’s Team of the Century — the 22 greatest players in the club’s history. It was confirmation that regardless of the controversies, the suspensions, and the acrimonious departure, he remained one of the defining figures in the Brown and Gold’s story.

Coaching Australia in the International Rules Series Against Ireland

After retirement, Dermott took on a role coaching the Australian national team in the International Rules Series — a hybrid code played against Ireland combining elements of Gaelic football and Australian rules. There’s a pleasing symmetry to a man of Irish descent coaching the Australian side in a series played against the country his parents emigrated from. He held the coaching role for two years.

Dermott Brereton’s Media Career — From Footy Pundit to National TV Face

The Six-Year Ernie Sigley Morning Show That Started It All

Even during his playing days, Dermott understood that a life in the media was where he was headed next. From quite early in his Hawthorn career, he cultivated media relationships and accepted television opportunities. One of the most formative was a six-year stint on a morning show hosted by veteran entertainer Ernie Sigley — a run that taught him discipline in front of the camera and the importance of being watchable outside your sporting context. Sigley mentored him, and the experience shaped his presentation style.

The AFL Footy Show, Channel Nine, and Two Decades in the Media Spotlight

In the early 1990s, Channel Nine began serious investment in AFL coverage for the first time in over twenty years. Dermott was one of the original panellists on the AFL Footy Show when it launched in 1994 — a show that became appointment television for millions of Australians. He stayed on as a panellist through the show’s most-watched years, combining sharp football analysis with the kind of personality that made viewers feel like they were listening to someone who actually cared.

He wrote regularly for The Age and later moved to the Seven Network in 2000 to provide match commentary and host The Game. When Seven lost AFL broadcast rights at the end of 2001, he returned to Nine. In 2002, he joined Nine’s expanded AFL coverage and remained a prominent fixture in the network’s football programming.

Fox Footy, SEN Radio, and Why He’s Still Must-Watch Television in 2025

Since 2012, Dermott has been with Foxtel’s Fox Footy channel — one of the most-watched AFL broadcasting platforms in the country. He remains one of the most distinctive voices in the commentary box: direct, opinionated, and willing to say the thing everyone else is thinking. He also contributes regularly to SEN 1116 radio, one of Melbourne’s leading sports radio stations. In 2025, approaching his early sixties, he shows no signs of slowing down. If anything, his commentary has grown sharper with time.

Beyond AFL Commentary — The Broader Media Life Nobody Talks About

Getaway, The Today Show, and Postcards — Dermott as Lifestyle TV Host

The version of Dermott Brereton that most AFL fans know — the commentary box pundit — is only part of the picture. In 2007, he joined the cast of Channel Seven’s national prime-time travel show Getaway, stepping well outside the sport and into a lifestyle hosting role that introduced him to an entirely different audience. He also filled in as weatherman for Steve Jacobs on the Today Show, appeared as a presenter on Melbourne’s popular travel program Postcards, and has hosted Sportsworld nationally. His television range is broader than almost any other Australian sporting figure of his generation.

The Line in the Sand Match: His Most Controversial Moment as a Director

From December 1997 to March 2006, Dermott served as a director of the Hawthorn Football Club. Most of his time on the board was unremarkable — governance, strategy, club direction. But in 2004, one incident attached itself to his name in headlines that haven’t fully gone away. The Round 14 match between Hawthorn and Essendon became known as the Line in the Sand Match after a bench-clearing brawl erupted mid-game. Reports emerged that during the half-time break, just before the brawl, Dermott had reportedly told Hawthorn players to “draw a line in the sand” and match Essendon physically. He denied making the comments in the precise form reported. The AFL investigated. The controversy swirled. It was one of the most talked-about incidents of his post-playing life.

The Man Behind the Microphone — Mental Health, Advocacy, and the R U OK? Podcast

“The Conversations That Could” — Why Dermott Is Using His Voice for Mental Health

In a career full of unexpected turns, few are as meaningful as Dermott Brereton’s role as host of The Conversations That Could — a podcast produced in partnership with R U OK?, the Australian mental health charity. The podcast brought together sporting figures from across different codes to talk honestly about the highs and lows of their careers, the pressures and pitfalls they experienced, and the ways those experiences shaped their mental health.

Guests have included AFL coaching legend Neil Balme, former NRL player and brain cancer advocate Mark Hughes, and cricketing great Adam Gilchrist. The conversations are exactly what the name promises — the kind of frank, human exchanges that people rarely have, but that can genuinely change the course of someone’s mental health journey. Given what Dermott has experienced in his own family — the loss of his father and his brother to suicide — his willingness to host these conversations isn’t just professionally interesting. It’s personal.

The Norm Smith Oration: What He Revealed About the Physical Cost of His Career

In a heartfelt speech at the Norm Smith Oration — one of Australian football’s most prestigious speaking events — Dermott spoke candidly about the physical toll of his playing career. Chronic pain, mobility challenges, and the long-term damage done by playing through injury and physical punishment throughout the 1980s have left lasting marks on his body. He framed it not as bitterness but as a challenge to the AFL to do better for the players of today — to understand what concussion and repeated physical trauma actually does to human beings over a lifetime.

It was a powerful, dignified speech from a man who still loves the game that broke his body, and it added another layer to an already complex public image.

Dermott Brereton’s Personal Life

His Marriage, Divorce, and the Children Who Mean the World to Him

Dermott was married for a period that overlapped with his peak playing and early media career, though he’s kept the specific details of his marriage — including his former wife’s name — private. What is publicly known is that the marriage ended in divorce and that he has spoken openly about the experience of navigating a divorce while remaining an active father.

Son Devlin and Daughter Keely — What We Know

Dermott has two children from his marriage: a son, Devlin Brereton, and a daughter, Keely Brereton. After the divorce, custody arrangements were agreed upon, with Dermott maintaining regular time with both children. He’s spoken warmly about fatherhood in interviews, describing his kids as a grounding force in a life that has often been very public and very hectic. Beyond their names, Dermott has deliberately kept both Devlin and Keely out of the spotlight — a choice that speaks well of him as a parent.

Life with Julie May — The Relationship That Stuck

After his divorce, Dermott went through a period of relationships that didn’t lead anywhere permanent, including a brief link to actress Nicky Whelan. Then came Julie May, an Australian model and businesswoman who has also been through divorce and is a mother from a previous relationship.

Dermott and Julie have been together for well over five years and have built a relationship that looks genuinely warm and grounded. They’ve travelled extensively together — from safaris in South Africa’s Kruger National Park to romantic evenings on the Greek island of Paros — and regularly document their adventures on social media with the kind of natural affection that doesn’t look performed. In June 2024, Dermott shared a red-carpet photo from the AFL Hall of Fame ceremony with the caption “2024 Hall of Fame Red Carpet with Miss Julie” — an understated but clearly proud acknowledgement of the woman in his life.

They haven’t married, and there are no biological children between them. But the relationship has a consistency and depth that suggests it’s exactly where both of them want to be.

Dermott Brereton Net Worth in 2025, Lifestyle, and What He Does Now

How He Built His Wealth After Football

Dermott Brereton’s net worth in 2025 is estimated at around $10 million Australian dollars. That figure reflects a lifetime of earnings across multiple streams — not just one career, but several running simultaneously. His income sources include:

• Fox Footy and SEN Radio media contracts, which have paid consistently well for over a decade
• His eight-year AFL playing contract earnings from Hawthorn’s dominant era (including what were substantial contracts for the 1980s)
• Television hosting fees across Getaway, Postcards, Today Show appearances, and other network work
• Keynote speaking and MC engagements at corporate and sporting functions across Australia — a market where former elite athletes with personality command significant fees
• Real estate investment in Melbourne’s property market over several decades

What Dermott Brereton Is Up to in 2025 and 2026

In 2025 and into 2026, Dermott is still active on multiple fronts. Fox Footy remains his primary platform, where he’s regarded as one of the most entertaining and insightful voices in the commentary box. His R U OK? podcast work continues, as does his keynote speaking career. He attends AFL events regularly — the Hall of Fame ceremony, club functions, media days — and remains as engaged with the game as ever.

Off the field, he and Julie May continue their life together, combining travel, social events, and the quiet rhythms of a couple who’ve found something good and aren’t in any hurry to change it.

At 61, Dermott Brereton is not a man winding down. He’s a man who has lived an enormous life — full of triumph, loss, chaos, and courage — and is still very much in the middle of it.

Frequently Asked Questions About Dermott Brereton

How old is Dermott Brereton?

Dermott Brereton was born on August 19, 1964, making him 61 years old as of 2025. He’ll turn 62 in August 2026.

What is Dermott Brereton’s net worth?

Dermott Brereton’s net worth is estimated at approximately $10 million Australian dollars, accumulated through his AFL career, a 30-plus year media career across television and radio, keynote speaking, and investments.

Who is Dermott Brereton’s partner?

Dermott Brereton is currently in a long-term relationship with Julie May, an Australian model and businesswoman. The couple have been together for over five years and regularly share their travels and life together on social media. They’re not married, but the relationship is considered committed and stable.

Does Dermott Brereton have children?

Yes. Dermott has two children from his marriage: a son named Devlin Brereton and a daughter named Keely Brereton. He’s maintained an active role as their father following his divorce.

What happened in the 1989 Grand Final?

In the opening moments of the 1989 VFL Grand Final, Dermott was hit with a solid shirtfront by Geelong’s Mark Yeates at the centre bounce. He was severely concussed, winded, and vomited on the ground. He was expected to be finished for the day. Instead, he got to his feet, returned to the game, took a mark, and kicked a goal. He finished with three goals as Hawthorn won by six points. He was later confirmed to have played with broken ribs.

Why did Dermott Brereton leave Hawthorn?

Dermott left Hawthorn in October 1993 following a pay dispute. After missing the entire 1993 season due to chronic hip injury, the club offered him a minimum-wage contract. He considered the offer an insult given his contribution to five premierships, and he walked.

Is Dermott Brereton still a football commentator?

Yes. As of 2025, Dermott Brereton continues his commentary and analysis work with Fox Footy on the Foxtel network and SEN 1116 radio in Melbourne. He remains one of the most recognised voices in Australian football broadcasting.

What mental health work does Dermott Brereton do?

Dermott hosts The Conversations That Could, a podcast created in partnership with R U OK?, the Australian mental health charity. The show features conversations with sporting figures about mental health, career pressures, and personal struggles. Given that Dermott lost both his father and his brother to suicide, the work carries deeply personal significance beyond the public advocacy.

What are Dermott Brereton’s career statistics?

Dermott Brereton played 211 AFL games in total: 189 for Hawthorn, 7 for Sydney Swans, and 15 for Collingwood. He kicked 427 goals for Hawthorn and 464 in total across his career. He won five VFL/AFL premierships (1983, 1986, 1988, 1989, 1991) and was selected in the All-Australian team in 1985, 1986, and 1988.