Wharfie Time
| Wharfie Time | |
|---|---|
 The Wharfie Time display on the big screen at Optus Stadium during the 2024 AFL season | |
| Frequency | Ad hoc |
| Venue | Optus Stadium (principally) Cockburn ARC (AFLW) |
| Inaugurated | 6 August 2023 |
| Founder | Matthew Pavlich |
| Most recent | 1 November 2026 |
| Organiser | Fremantle Football Club |
Wharfie Time is a slogan used by the Fremantle Football Club in the Australian Football League (AFL). It is used by the club as a crowd activation, typically during the last quarter of selected home matches at Optus Stadium.
During the activation, big screens at the venue show a container ship crashing through waves, accompanied by the sound of a heartbeat and the tolling bell intro from the AC/DC song "Hells Bells"; this is used to rally the team and excite the crowd in the remaining minutes of a close match.
Wharfie Time was first activated late in the 2023 AFL season, with its national prominence growing substantially in 2026 when Fremantle finished minor premiers and pursued the first premiership in the club's 32-year history. At the end of the season, it became associated with the club's late collapse in the 2026 AFL Grand Final, when the team conceded four straight goals after Wharfie Time's activation to lose the premiership to the Brisbane Lions.
Origins
The Fremantle Football Club was founded in 1994 to represent the port city of Fremantle, Western Australia. The club is nicknamed the Dockers in reference to Fremantle's maritime and dockworker heritage; "wharfie" is a slang term for a dockworker. A 2026 report in the Australian Financial Review dates the "wharfie time" phrase back to the club's early years in the AFL, when commentators supposedly used the term to refer to the Dockers' frequent Sunday afternoon timeslots.
Matthew Pavlich speech (2009)
It’s a part of our folklore. It's embraced by the club. It's been embraced by the Fremantle community and fans.
It’s pretty powerful. It's astonishing to think that it all came from one Friday night against Hawthorn all of those years ago in a mumble jumble pre-game speech to the players.
The slogan first gained public visibility in round 8, 2009 during Fremantle's match against Hawthorn at Subiaco Oval. Speaking before the start of the match, while fitted with a microphone for Seven Sport's broadcast, then-Fremantle captain Matthew Pavlich told his teammates: "Hey, put on your Superman capes, boys – it's wharfie time". Fremantle lost the match by 22 points.
Quizzed by media in the week following the match as to the backstory behind the "wharfie time" concept, Pavlich's teammate Luke McPharlin was stopped by club officials from explaining its lore, but an article in The West Australian at the time said it was "understood to underpin the core values the players have committed to this season". A 2014 newspaper interview with the since-retired McPharlin and his former teammates Shaun McManus and Paul Hasleby elaborated on the meaning of the term for the first time: he noted that Pavlich's reference to Superman capes came from a speech by McManus in a team meeting two years earlier, when McManus likened pulling on an AFL club guernsey to donning a Superman cape, and that the "wharfie time" concept was a new addition based on the values and standards of the playing group. Hasleby noted that the "wharfie spirit" was manufactured in a similar fashion to the "Bloods culture" at Sydney, saying "At the time, the thinking was that wharfies and how they were hard workers was worth adopting into our values. To everybody else, it probably didn't mean much, but to the players who were kicking around in that environment, it meant a hell of a lot."
It was about getting down and getting dirty, let's get into it. It's about recognising our heritage.
Vision of Pavlich's speech was later replayed on a 2016 episode of Friday Front Bar ahead of his 350th AFL game, when the hosts poked fun at the concept and struggled to explain what the phrase actually meant.
Fan activation
Introduction in 2023
A version of the Wharfie Time activation was launched for the first time during Fremantle's round 21, 2023 match against Brisbane, following a banana kick goal from Michael Frederick with 1:09 remaining that cut the margin to two points. The scoreboard displayed a purple and white wave video around Optus Stadium alongside the phrase "wharfie time". Fremantle lost by three points. The activation was the brainchild of Pavlich, who would later say that Wharfie Time became "the people's thing". Players and fans were given no warning prior to its introduction, as the club deliberately kept a veil of secrecy in a bid to grow the concept organically.
Wharfie Time appeared twice in matches in 2024. In March 2025, Fremantle uploaded a video to its Docker TV YouTube channel outlining the changes to the gameday experience at home matches for the season; at this point, the AC/DC song "Hells Bells" was introduced during both Wharfie Time and the pre-match coin toss. As it grew in both familiarity and popularity, it became associated with exciting finishes in close Fremantle home games, and featured four times in 2025.
2026 season
When the beat gets going, you can feel your whole body vibrating. It's insane. The crowd is electric.
It certainly lifts us, and I reckon it potentially spooks the opposition because they've never experienced it before. It's a massive advantage for us.
In April 2026, the AFL applied to trademark the phrase. This attracted the ire of Pavlich, who said that while "the reality is the AFL is a commercial beast and they can do what they like", his view was that it was "the people's term".
Wharfie Time began to gain greater recognition outside Fremantle during the 2026, during which season Fremantle won the minor premiership and had a club-record 14-match winning streak. In round 9 against Hawthorn, Fremantle activated Wharfie Time while trailing by four points with four minutes remaining in the final quarter; the Dockers subsequently kicked three goals to win by 15 points. After the match, Hawthorn player Dylan Moore said he was unsure what Wharfie Time was until it was activated and described it as quite distracting. Thereafter, Wharfie Time became a more common topic of commentary with AFL media, commentators frequently speculating whether or not it would be used in each game. It gained further prominence in Fremantle's semi-final against Geelong, when the club activated Wharfie Time after its lead was reduced to eight points with 75 seconds remaining; Patrick Voss kicked a goal from the next centre clearance moments later and Fremantle won the match by 14 points.
2026 Grand Final
Ahead of the 2026 AFL Grand Final against the Brisbane Lions, which was played at the Melbourne Cricket Ground, the AFL gave Fremantle permission to activate Wharfie Time, setting rules including allowing it to be played only once and only after a Fremantle goal – consistent with provisions in place since 2025 allowing grand final clubs to play fan activations after their own goals as they would for home matches.
With 4:18 remaining in the grand final, Fremantle activated Wharfie Time after Patrick Voss kicked his third goal to give the Dockers a 17-point lead, their highest lead of the match. Within the next minute of playing time, Brisbane had kicked two goals – by Charlie Cameron and Zac Bailey – to bring the margin back to five points. With just over a minute remaining, Logan Morris marked and kicked a goal to put Brisbane ahead by one point. In the final seconds of the match, Morris kicked another goal and Brisbane won by seven points. Morris had not scored any goals in the first three quarters, however kicked three in the final quarter, put down in part to the absence of Fremantle captain Alex Pearce who had been playing on him, but left the field with an achilles tendon injury during the third quarter.
Fremantle's failure in Wharfie Time in the biggest moment dominated discussion after the match, commentators criticising the decision to activate it in that moment and considering it a case of premature celebration, despite having been questioning when it would be played beforehand. Brisbane players Sam Draper and Josh Dunkley said post-match interviews the club had prepared for Wharfie Time to be used, having played the song at training during the week, and viewing the activation as a trigger to go up a notch.
In the aftermath of the match, many commentators speculated about whether Fremantle might cease to use Wharfie Time beyond 2026, due to the potential that it be associated less with fan excitement and more with the club's most heartbreaking moment. Fremantle senior coach Justin Longmuir said post-match that he would want it to continue being used in 2027. The club made no public statement one way or the other to Wharfie Time's future in the immediate aftermath, before next using it in an AFL Women's match five weeks later and shortly afterwards confirming that it would remain into 2027.
Activation criteria
A May 2026 Code Sports article documenting the history of Wharfie Time surmised that the typical but non-stringent triggers for use of Wharfie Time are: once per match; deep into the final quarter; when the margin is within two goals, regardless of which team is leading; and after a goal has been scored, regardless of which team scored it. Not all activations of Wharfie Time have met all four criteria.
Exactly who within the club makes the decision to activate Wharfie Time is not publicly known. Code Sports' May 2026 article, reported that Fremantle's game day events team – led by Kellie Black and Olivia Minutillo – motioned to the scoreboard operators when to activate Wharfie Time on that occasion it was used in round 9, 2026; while in a August 2026 episode of The Agenda Setters, co-host Caroline Wilson declared that the ultimate call for when to activate Wharfie Time rested with the club's chief executive officer Simon Garlick. "He won't admit it," Wilson said. "I've quizzed him about it, he refuses to say it's him – he is the man who has the link to the scoreboard (operator)."
List of activations
Between its debut in 2023 and its most recent use in the 2026 grand final, the Wharfie Time activation has been displayed on 11 occasions. Of those 11 matches, five ended in wins and five in losses, with one draw. Despite its reputation, only once did Fremantle win a game after trailing when Wharfie Time was activated.[citation needed]
| # | Match | Opponent | Venue | Time | Goalkicker at activation | Score at activation | Margin at activation | Final score | Result | Margin change |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Round 21, 2023 | Brisbane Lions | Optus Stadium | 1:09 | Michael Frederick | 11.8 (74) – 11.10 (76) | Behind by 2 points | 11.8 (74) – 11.11 (77) | Lost by 3 points | -1 |
| 2 | Round 11, 2024 | Collingwood | Optus Stadium | 1:49 | Alex Pearce | 11.8 (74) – 10.15 (75) | Behind by 1 point | 11.9 (75) – 10.15 (75) | Drew | +1 |
| 3 | Round 22, 2024 | Geelong | Optus Stadium | 1:44 | N/A (During a stoppage) | 9.8 (62) – 9.13 (67) | Behind by 5 points | 9.8 (62) – 10.13 (73) | Lost by 11 points | -6 |
| 4 | Round 9, 2025 | Collingwood | Optus Stadium | 11:23 | Murphy Reid | 11.8 (74) – 13.6 (84) | Behind by 10 points | 12.11 (83) – 15.7 (97) | Lost by 14 points | -4 |
| 5 | Round 16, 2025 | St Kilda | Optus Stadium | 0:49 | Mitch Owens (St Kilda) | 10.15 (75) – 9.15 (69) | Ahead by 6 points | 11.15 (81) – 9.15 (69) | Won by 12 points | +6 |
| 6 | Round 18, 2025 | Hawthorn | Optus Stadium | 6:42 | Josh Treacy | 12.3 (75) – 9.10 (64) | Ahead by 11 points | 12.5 (77) – 9.10 (64) | Won by 13 points | +2 |
| 7 | Round 21, 2025 | Carlton | Optus Stadium | 4:49 | Isaiah Dudley | 12.4 (76) – 10.6 (66) | Ahead by 10 points | 15.4 (94) – 10.7 (67) | Won by 27 points | +17 |
| 8 | Elimination Final, 2025 | Gold Coast | Optus Stadium | 7:24 | Luke Jackson | 11.6 (72) – 10.13 (73) | Behind by 1 point | 12.7 (79) – 11.14 (80) | Lost by 1 point | 0 |
| 9 | Round 9, 2026 | Hawthorn | Optus Stadium | 4:08 | Michael Frederick | 9.15 (69) – 11.7 (73) | Behind by 4 points | 12.16 (88) – 11.7 (73) | Won by 15 points | +19 |
| 10 | Semi Final, 2026 | Geelong | Optus Stadium | 1:15 | Tom Stewart (Geelong) | 17.12 (114) – 16.10 (106) | Ahead by 8 points | 18.12 (120) – 16.10 (106) | Won by 14 points | +6 |
| 11 | Grand Final, 2026 | Brisbane Lions | MCG | 4:18 | Patrick Voss | 12.17 (89) – 10.12 (72) | Ahead by 17 points | 12.17 (89) – 14.12 (96) | Lost by 7 points | -24 |
Use by women's team
Fremantle's AFL Women's (AFLW) team first utilised the Wharfie Time activation in round 3, 2026. Hosting Carlton at Cockburn ARC Oval, Gabby O'Sullivan kicked a running goal with 1:32 remaining on the clock to draw the Dockers within 7 points of the Blues, 6.5 (41) to 7.6 (48) when Wharfie Time was activated. Despite numerous forays forward, the Dockers could not surpass the Blues and eventually lost, 6.6 (42) to 7.6 (48).
| # | Match | Opponent | Venue | Time | Goalkicker at activation | Score at activation | Margin at activation | Final score | Result | Margin change |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Round 3, 2026 | Carlton | Cockburn ARC Oval | 1:32 | Gabby O'Sullivan | 6.5 (41) – 7.6 (48) | Behind by 7 points | 6.6 (42) – 7.6 (48) | Lost by 6 points | +1 |
| 2 | Round 12, 2025 | Sydney | Cockburn ARC Oval | 1:26 | Hayley Miller | 5.6 (36) – 5.7 (37) | Behind by 1 point | 5.6 (36) – 5.7 (37) | Lost by 1 point | 0 |
Notes
References
- 1 2 3 4 5 Hytner, Mike; Harmon, Steph (23 September 2026). "It's AFL grand final week – why is everyone talking about 'Wharfie Time'?". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 24 September 2026. Retrieved 26 September 2026.
- ↑ Schmook, Nathan (30 August 2026). "AFLW match report: Blues hang on in a thriller against fast-finishing Dockers". Carlton Football Club. Archived from the original on 5 September 2026. Retrieved 26 September 2026.
- ↑ Wootton, Hannah (2026-05-05). "Wharfie time! AFL's bizarre move hints at title favourites". Australian Financial Review. Retrieved 2026-09-27.
- ↑ Meadows, Neroli (27 July 2016). "What the AFL world thinks of Matthew Pavlich". Fremantle Football Club. Archived from the original on 26 September 2026. Retrieved 26 September 2026.
- ↑ DiFabrizio, Michael (19 April 2010). "Why it's suddenly Wharfie Time at Fremantle". The Roar. Archived from the original on 14 November 2018. Retrieved 26 September 2026.
- 1 2 3 Green, Warwick (17 May 2014). "Super Pav has a heart of purple". The Mercury. p. 74.
- ↑ Schmook, Nathan (15 May 2009). "Hawks win in west". AFL.com.au. Archived from the original on 18 May 2009. Retrieved 26 September 2026.
- ↑ Butler, Steve (2009-05-23). "Famous night for Freo: inspirational first puts Dockers in touch with the greats". The West Australian. p. 122.
- ↑ Front Bar Entertainment (29 July 2016). Friday Front Bar: It's wharfie time (Video). AFL.com.au. Event occurs at 11:35. Archived from the original on 27 September 2026.
- ↑ "Match Replay: Fremantle v Brisbane". AFL.com.au. 7 August 2023. 2:02:51. Retrieved 27 September 2026.
- ↑ Patterson, Emily (8 July 2026). "He is Fremantle's favourite son, but now he's back as part of the enemy". AFL.com.au. Retrieved 27 September 2026.
- 1 2 3 4 Reilly, Eliza (15 May 2026). "How Matthew Pavlich's infamous Wharfie Time speech became the Dockers' most lethal weapon". Code Sports. Retrieved 27 September 2026.
- ↑ Docker TV (2025-03-19). What's new at a Freo GAMEDAY in 2025!. YouTube.com. Retrieved 2026-09-27.
- ↑ Philipps, Michael (5 May 2026). "A good omen? AFL eyes 'Wharfie Time' trademark as Freo push through sickness to climb ladder". WA Today. Archived from the original on 27 July 2026. Retrieved 26 September 2026.
- ↑ Schmook, Nathan (14 August 2026). "Freo clinches minor premiership with gutsy win over Crows". Fremantle Football Club. Archived from the original on 26 September 2026. Retrieved 26 September 2026.
- ↑ Schmook, Nathan (7 May 2026). "Brilliant Dockers surge past Hawks to win eighth straight". AFL.com.au. Archived from the original on 11 May 2026. Retrieved 26 September 2026.
- ↑ Slevison, Andrew (15 May 2026). "How "chaotic" Wharfie Time rattled the Hawks". SEN. Archived from the original on 19 May 2026. Retrieved 26 September 2026.
- ↑ "Wharfie Time rings as Dockers beat Cats in epic semi". ESPN. 11 September 2026. Archived from the original on 26 September 2026. Retrieved 26 September 2026.
- ↑ Rogers, Michael (24 September 2026). "AFL makes 'Wharfie Time' call ahead of Grand Final". AFL.com.au. Archived from the original on 26 September 2026. Retrieved 26 September 2026.
- ↑ Tom Naghten (27 September 2025). "Why is music playing after goals in the AFL Grand Final?". The Sporting News. Retrieved 28 September 2025.
- ↑ Pollard, Kyle (26 September 2026). "AFL grand final quick hits: Lions use Wharfie Time to their advantage as Josh Treacy misses a sitter". ABC News. Archived from the original on 26 September 2026. Retrieved 26 September 2026.
- 1 2 3 Faulkner, Will (26 September 2026). "'Worst use of all time': Freo's brutal 'Wharfie Time' backfire that sparked all-time Grand Final comeback". Fox Sports. Archived from the original on 26 September 2026. Retrieved 26 September 2026.
- ↑ Black, Sarah (26 September 2026). "'It's all worth it': Allen reveals hidden toll, and what Draper thought of Wharfie Time". AFL.com.au. Archived from the original on 26 September 2026. Retrieved 26 September 2026.
- ↑ Snape, Jack (26 September 2026). "Brisbane inspired by Fremantle's Wharfie Time in AFL grand final, says Josh Dunkley". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 26 September 2026. Retrieved 26 September 2026.
- ↑ Jackson Barrett (27 September 2026). "Jackson Barrett: Fremantle Dockers' use of Wharfie Time in grand final should be death knell". The West Australian. Retrieved 15 October 2026.
- 1 2 Kyle Pollard (27 September 2026). "What is Wharfie Time? How Fremantle's viral celebration backfired in the AFL grand final". Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Retrieved 15 October 2026.
- ↑ Schmook, Nathan (26 September 2026). "'No sugar-coating it': Wharfie Time not to blame as Dockers reel from GF loss". AFL.com.au. Archived from the original on 26 September 2026. Retrieved 26 September 2026.
- ↑ Aidan Cellini (2 November 2026). "Fremantle makes call on controversial 'Wharfie Time' after Grand Final heartbreak". Retrieved 2 November 2026.
- ↑ Kempton, Josh (4 August 2026). "Fremantle Dockers make request to AFL to use 'Wharfie Time' on grand final day". The West Australian. Retrieved 27 September 2026.
- ↑ "AFLW last two mins: Blues survive 'Wharfie Time' to deny Dockers in thriller". AFL.com.au. 30 August 2026. Retrieved 27 September 2026.