Footscray/Western Bulldogs Liberatore played junior football for Brunswick City. He was recruited by , where he played both under-19s and reserve grade football. After winning the
Morrish Medal in 1984, he called , and in the hope of playing senior football.
Mick Malthouse, who was Footscray senior coach at the time, invited Liberatore to train but made no guarantees that he would get a game. At his first training session with the club, Liberatore was teased by full-forward
Simon Beasley, who said that due to his lack of height he would have been better off training to be a jockey at the nearby
Flemington Racecourse. He was a member of the team that won the 1988 VFL reserves premiership. Standing at 163 cm, Liberatore played only 18 senior games until the 1990 season, when he played 19 games and won the
Brownlow Medal for the best and fairest senior AFL player. Despite missing the final 3 games of the season, his tally of 18 votes narrowly beat
Graham Wright (Collingwood) with 17 votes and
Stephen Silvagni (Carlton) on 16 votes. Liberatore played a total of 283 senior games for Footscray/Western Bulldogs in a career that included 13 finals, life membership of the club, and selection on the interchange bench in the club's Team of the Century. Liberatore was noted for his ability to read the play and his prolific tackling. Throughout his senior career, he made 1,225 tackles in his career; an average of 4.39 per game. In 1992 he became the first VFL/AFL player to exceed 100 tackles in a season, and then exceeded 100 tackles each season until 1996. His season tally of 142 tackles in 1994 stood as the VFL/AFL record until 2006, when
James McDonald bettered it by one. Liberatore garnered an unwanted reputation following the 1999 Season Round 10 game against Brisbane at the Gabba. Whilst he denied eye gouging, his hand contact with the face of
Craig McRae was deemed excessive, and he was suspended for 3 weeks. It was the first time he had been suspended for the act after previous incidents with
Steven Lawrence (Brisbane) and
Craig Kelly (Sydney). Liberatore was responsible for an ugly off-the-ball incident against
Matthew Knights in Round 2 of the 2001 season, which resulted in a suspension for five matches. The nature of the incident led many football pundits such as
Robert Walls to call for his retirement. ==Playing statistics==