A super athlete and Fremantle’s most decorated player in its 22-year history, Matthew Pavlich was long admired as one of the AFL’s biggest stars. His combination of size, speed and skill saw him respected as one of the AFL’s best all-round talents of the modern era.
Current work
Matthew is involved in a number of small business ventures. He is co-founder of PickStar, an online platform providing direct connections to over 500 sports stars for events, marketing and promotions, as well as being a director of PMY Group which develops, implements, manages and commercialises digital, technology and data projects for its clients.
Previous experience
Hailing from Sacred Heart College and Woodville-West Torrens in Adelaide, Matthew was selected by Fremantle with the fourth pick in the 1999 National Draft.
He starred in a number of roles for the Dockers over his 17-year career, becoming the first and only WA based player to play over 300 AFL games. Matthew was named as an All-Australian six times including in the midfield, fullback, half forward and full forward. Early in his career Matthew helped Fremantle advance to their first finals series in 2003 and a preliminary finals berth in 2006.
As Captain throughout the 2007/08 seasons he was at the coalface of the club’s rebuild and enjoyed that labour nearing the end of his career where he led Freo into five finals series including the club’s first Grand Final appearance in 2013. He captained the Dockers for a record 9 years which sees him ranked 6th all time for games played as an AFL Captain.
Off the field Matthew has obtained a Bachelor of Science from UWA and is near completion of his MBA. He is the AFLPA’s President and a member of their board of directors, as well as spending time on the AFL Laws of the Game Committee.
Brand ambassador
He has been a brand ambassador for a number of corporate organisations including Woodside, Frasers Property Group, Kia Motors Australia, Homeloans, Crown Resorts and Adidas.
Media
He was a competent media performer with a number of organisations throughout his playing career and has now embarked on a career with Fox Sports, Nova 93.7 and Channel 9 Perth. Matthew’s autobiography ‘Purple Heart’ was published by Pan MacMillan in 2015 with the book selling out in stores almost instantly.
Matthew has also played a role in a variety of charities including the Starlight Foundation, Camp Quality and PBF.
“Leading high performing and diverse teams.” Matthew is a sought after speaking talent given his vast experience within the AFL industry, tertiary education and his burgeoning business experience. He opens up on his various anecdotes from his 17 years in the game focusing on dealing with failure and adversity, operating a high performance culture, the importance of diversity and inclusion, team dynamics, feedback, values and behaviours and leadership.