Tom and Tony Liberatore to achieve combined 500-game milestone at Western Bulldogs
Tom and Tony Liberatore will achieve a special combined milestone in round 1 of the AFL season. They speak to GLENN MCFARLANE about their special connection to the Western Bulldogs.
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One of the first calls Tom Liberatore made when he found out his AFL career had come full circle — being voted back into the Western Bulldogs’ leadership group in 2024 after a long absence — was to his famous footballer father, Tony.
It wasn’t to brag. It wasn’t a reach out for a compliment or approval.
It wasn’t even for a pat on the back.
It was to ask his dad one simple question.
“Have you ever been vice-captain?”
Tony Liberatore recalled the short conversation this week, which says much about the tight connection between father and son, as well as a hint of the parallels and career trajectories they have shared across two different Western Bulldogs eras.
“When he (Tom) was made vice-captain, he texted me, and said: ‘Hey have you ever been vice-captain?’,” Tony said.
“I said: ‘No, mate.’
“Then he said: ‘Ahhh, I’ve got one over you then!’”
There is a good-natured rivalry between the two T. Liberatores, just as much as there is an unbreakable bond that has at times been challenging, but remains tight as a bear squeeze.
Tony can always say he won a Brownlow Medal, scoring with 18 votes in 1990, whereas Tom could quite rightly add that his 17 votes from last year didn’t even get him in the top 20.
They can’t be split on Charlie Sutton Medals, having both won one of the Bulldogs’ best and fairest awards — Tony in 1991, and Tom in 2014.
Tony played 283 games between 1986 and 2002, a tally that Tom – who turns 32 in May – reckons could yet prove a bridge too far for him and his once-troublesome knees.
“He might have me, I reckon,” Tom laughed when asked this week.
Sunday’s round 1 clash with Melbourne looms as a special day for the pair from a history sense.
It will be the 500th time there has been a Liberatore wearing the famous red, white and blue, with Tom set to play his 217th match putting them among the top bracket of father-sons in terms of games played.
A close friend told Tom this week about the impending 500-game milestone; his dad only found out when this reporter called him to ask him about it.
Both have always possessed a no-nonsense approach to their football, with a combative, aggressive attack on the ball. But as understated as they are, this milestone clearly means a lot of them.
“I didn’t even know that,” Tony, 58, said when told they would be joining a very select group of 500-game father and sons.
“It’s surprising, but it’s so good. There probably won’t be a banner for me to run through on Sunday, but I’ll be there.”
Tom has never been one to look in the rearview mirror, he prefers to charge on forwards, but this unique games’ connection to his father meant some brief reflection.
“I suppose when you pause and think about it, it is a proud moment for me, because I wasn’t going to play many games without him,” the tough midfielder said.
“He was able to get me on the list. It really speaks volumes about what he’s done for me.”
Tom carved out a strong junior resume before the Dogs took him with pick 40 in the 2010 national draft.
He wasn’t chosen because he was Tony Liberatore’s son, but his bloodlines unquestionably helped him to make his home at the Whitten Oval, a place he wasn’t unfamiliar with.
He had spent much of his early years at the ground, as a young kid obsessed with the game, and deadly accurate when quizzed about players’ numbers across the competition, while he watched his father in the second phase of his career.
So what does he remember of Tony’s career?
One moment sticks firmly in his recollections – it was 2001 and as a nine-year-old he was sitting with his mum at the MCG when many of those around him started booing loudly.
“It’s the only day I really remember,” Tom said this week. “I was about nine and I remember rolling into the ground (and then) everyone was just booing.”
“I said to mum: ‘What’s that?’ and she said: ‘Sssh, it’s probably (about) your father.”
It was the day when Liberatore landed a blow on the forearm of Richmond’s Matthew Knights, splitting it open, sparking some wild scenes at the MCG.
Liberatore copped a five-week ban over the incident.
“He would have only been a little kid,” Tony said. “He might have been (saying), ‘Is that my old man?’”
That was the second part of Liberatore senior’s career. The first was a triumph over adversity and knock-backs where he stunned the footy world by winning the game’s highest individual honour in 1990 as one of the Bulldogs’ great success stories.
Then he had to reinvent himself as a tagger after he was almost shown the door, making himself public enemy No.1 with opposition teams and fans with his negating tactics, but defended staunchly by Bulldogs fans.
“I went through stages when Terry Wallace said (in the documentary The Year Of The Dog) ‘He has had a great career, but he has had his time, move him on’, but I ended up playing another six or seven years,” Tony said.
“I just changed my role and became a negating type player.”
Tony sees some unmissable parallels between his career and his son’s pathway, given both suffered serious knee injuries and had to reinvent themselves after encountering mid-career hurdles.
“There are a lot of similarities actually, even with the battles we had with our knees,” he said.
Tony endured two knee reconstructions, returning one time in 1998 after only 18 weeks; Tom has always had two, with the second bringing his dad to tears in the change rooms in 2018.
“He’s pretty cruisy, he’s actually pretty similar to Bevo (coach Luke Beveridge),” Tom said of his dad. “He’s quite emotional when it comes to us (his family).”
“After I did my second knee, he was carrying on like a pork chop. It was up in Canberra and he came into the rooms balling his eyes out. I was like ‘Shut up … just relax, it’s all good’.”
Tony maintains that Tom is just as emotional, but keeps it hidden.
“Deep down inside, he is the same, but probably doesn’t show it as much on the outside as I do,” Tony said. “You know how much the club and his teammates mean to him.”
Libba’s second knee came just two years after the extraordinary 2016 Western Bulldogs’ flag – the club’s first since 1954 – where Tom claimed that premiership medal that so cruelly eluded his father.
“I’ve been very fortunate that Tom has given me a bit of an extension of my playing days, and obviously watching the 2016 grand final was mind-blowing,” Tony said.
“Sometimes I stop now and just think about it. I was so happy to see them win the 2016 flag, even though I didn’t play in it, but it was great for the supporters and it was great for our family as well.”
The challenges that followed the flag for the Bulldogs – and for Tom – are well documented.
Beveridge said recently the playing group didn’t handle success well, and it took some tough years and some even tougher conversations to turn it all around again.
Tom’s commitment to the contest never wavered, but his commitment to what he needed off the field was not as rock solid.
“We’ve been through a bit, where there was a bit of a crossroads,” Liberatore said when asked about the tough conversations he had with Beveridge during his career trough that followed the premiership. “Bevo has always been honest with me. I respect everything he said and it helped me in the long run.”
He was dropped out of the team for a period during that time, and also dropped out of the leadership group.
He said there was no flick of the switch behind his career renaissance in recent seasons, evidenced by two seconds and two thirds in the past four Sutton Medals.
“I think it was just the support from family, the support from friends, and the support from the club that helped me,” he said.
Those closest to him have little doubt that becoming a father himself – to son Oscar – was a catalyst.
Asked if parenthood had changed him, Tom said: “Definitely, it changes you. I mean it has coincided with me playing a bit better footy again. It certainly helps.”
That change, and his deep connection to a playing group that he thinks should be contesting for a second flag after a few frustrating years has seen him return to the leadership group.
“It’s quite humbling, and it means a lot to be recognised by your peers and to try and help out ‘Bont’ (captain Marcus Bontempelli),” he said.
“It’s been great … coming back and playing every week after having a few years of injury and bad form in sort of (20) 17 and (20) 18, the knee injuries and all that stuff. (It is good) to be playing consistent football and it all sort of flows on from there.”
Tony said: “(Tom) gets the team-first aspect more than any other player I’ve seen.”
“Most players when they first start out, it is all about them. But Tom got the team aspect from day one and that’s why he has been voted by his peers into the leadership group.”
Libba couldn’t be any more different to the polished Bontempelli, but there is a mutual brotherhood between the pair.
Insiders will tell you Bontempelli was more chuffed than Liberatore with the way the players’ vote went,
“We’ve always been pretty close,” Tom said of his connection to the skipper. “He was two or three years younger than me, and we have played a lot of footy together.”
“To be alongside him (as vice-captain) is pretty special to me. I am just grateful to get the opportunity (again) to be under his tutelage.”
His father said: “I went to the practice match against Hawthorn (last month) and he was the captain for the day (with Bontempelli playing in the later VFL game).
“Just the way he instructed and supported a kid like Ryley Sanders, telling him where to run and where to stand, and it was good to see. He cares about this team, he cares so much about the club.”
Liberatore will be alongside Sanders when the teenager plays his first AFL match on Sunday, and he can’t wait to see how the kid fares.
“His (Sanders’) appetite and diligence around training has been incredible, just the way he goes about it gives the old boys a push,” he said.
Liberatore is in the final year of his current deal.
The Dogs will be hopeful that he has more miles left in his knees, given his impact on the team.
He says he is managing his knees well at the moment and is driven by the chase for more success – for his current teammates who weren’t there in 2016 as much as anything else.
“The main (driving) factor is getting the supporters another one (a flag), and getting these young players I play with now to do what we did,” he said.
“I’d love to share it with the blokes who weren’t there (in 2016). I was lucky enough to get one after six years; I’d love some of these boys to do the same.”
His competitive nature is still strong: “I just love trying to win and I love having a laugh with my mates at the same time.”
That last part is in the Liberatore DNA.
Originally published as Tom and Tony Liberatore to achieve combined 500-game milestone at Western Bulldogs
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