Wharfie Time - A Clarification - Editorial (29.09.2026)

SPEAKER_1 (0:01)

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This is Mornings with Mark Duffield on SENWA.

Mark Duffield (0:43)

Welcome to the SENWA radio studio. We're out here at Optus Stadium Tuesday morning in Perth. And we are here thanks to Beaumont Homes award-winning design built to be loved forever. Going to be some showers in our city today atop of 19 degrees. Made in WA for WA. This is Mornings with Mark Duffield on SENWA. Now, I'm already hating this editorial in advance because it feels like the debate over Wharfie Time is going viral. It is spreading like COVID. Within days, it may be spoken about globally, and then the whole world will have lost its mind. Just a reminder, Wharfie Time is a novel crowd activation that stemmed from something Matthew Pavlich used to say to players in his last on-field pre-match address almost 20 years ago. It was given new life over the last two seasons by someone at the club. We suspect we know who, but we can't be sure because the first rule of Wharfie Time is you don't talk about Wharfie Time. But the key term here is crowd activation. The key misunderstanding here, which is in danger of becoming a gross misrepresentation, is that it is a tactical tool.

Now, you would have had to be living under a rock to not know that the bells for Wharfie Time told on Saturday after a Pat Vos goal to put the Dockers 17 points in front. It came with just over four minutes on the clock. And in that four minutes, the Lions went to a new level, kicked four goals from four shots and won the grand final.

There was a poll on the Age website yesterday, which drew 10,000 responses. 65% of people called for an end to Wharfie Time based on what happened in the grand final. Now, we're going to be speaking with Dockers CEO, Simon Garlic, on the show today in a few moments, and we'll put the question to him.

But there are a few pertinent points here. As I said on the show yesterday, when Wharfie Time was used in the grand final, the Lions needed three goals in four minutes. They were a great team chasing history. It was then or never, and they chose then. The players post-match talked about how they'd prepared for Wharfie Time and planned to use it for their own energy.

Chris Fagan acknowledged the conversations, but played down the influence.

Others have suggested that Freo players went into celebration mode when Wharfie Time was played. And that claim is nothing short of nonsensical. It's never been used like that, even if it does have any tactical value. Why would it be used that way when it had been the opposite of that on the handful of occasions it had been used? And the key word here is handful. So Wharfie Time had been used twice this year previously in 13 home games at Optus Stadium. They were already coming hard at Hawthorn when it was used in that game. They went past Hawthorn after it was used, and I suspect that has contributed to the debate about Wharfie Time and the exaggeration in its value to on-field performance. They were trying to cling to a lead against Geelong in a final, and the Bells told they won one clearance with a minute left, and of course Pat Voss kicked the goal that iced the game. It was used once last year against Gold Coast in a final, and Fremantle actually lost that game. It has never been used as a celebration, just an activation. It generates noise and energy, and if the players tap into that, so much the better.

Because it came in the middle of a surge against the Hawks, and I stress in the middle, not at the start, in some people's minds, it became a tactic.

Now opposition teams realised the noise had surprised the Hawks, and Hawthorne declared they would plan for it if they played there again, and clearly Brisbane planned for it on Saturday. But here's the thing. Brisbane had to go when they went. Four minutes left. Bells or no bells? If there were no bells, no Wharfie Time, and the Lions had surged back and won the game as they did, the same people who are trying to kill Wharfie Time would have been questioning, fiercely, I might add, why it wasn't used. And if it is killed off, they'll be killing off something that's been used four times in the last two years. It's not a tactic. It's a bit of fun for the crowd. If the Lions handled it well, good on them. I suspect it had a lot more to do with just how good they are and not something that went up on the scoreboard.