The Freo captain plays his 300th game for the club this Saturday night against Geelong at Patersons Stadium.
But the option was there for him in his early years to leave Fremantle and head back home to play for Adelaide, the club he’d supported growing up, or Port Adelaide.
Pavlich chose to stay with Fremantle and is now unrivalled as its greatest ever player.
His father Steve said the reason he didn’t leave WA was simple.
“Because he wanted to help Fremantle get better,” he said.
“That’s it, that’s the real base of it.
“There were times that he was very frustrated that they weren’t doing as well as they would have liked, but he wanted to be part of building that history at the Dockers.”
Steve Pavlich said his son had also been raised to value loyalty highly, and he believed that ultimately played an integral part in keeping him in WA.
“His relationships with the people at the club and those around the club that he had met were very important to him,” he said.
“He felt loyal to those people who had invested time in him and he didn’t want to break that loyalty.”
Anthony Goodrich, Pavlich’s football coach at Sacred Heart College in Adelaide, credited the Freo skipper’s upbringing for moulding him into the person he is today.
“He has this well-balanced, well-adjusted moral compass and he just has a great sense of what’s right and wrong,” he said.
“There are a lot of kids that come through that we look back on and think, we’re really proud that we’ve been able to help them. I don’t know that Matt needed a lot of help, because he had such a great family.
“He’s certainly a person that anyone here at Sacred Heart who had anything to do with him is proud to have been associated with him.
“His football achievements are just sensational, but topping that are his achievements as a person.”
Goodrich believed Pavlich turned down more money and the lure of instant success to stay with Fremantle and be a one-club man.
“My way of looking in, Matt saw it as unfinished business,” he said.
“He plays the game for more than just money. He has that passion to get the ultimate prize and to do that with one club that’s had its struggles, for him to be a big part of that and help engineer it, he should be respected for that.
“There was probably the big money offer and he was a long way from home. Would that have been the easier decision for him to make? Possibly. But to me, he’s made the right one.”
Match Day Information
Be in the rooms pre-match for Pav's 300th
