Fremantle captain Matthew Pavlich didn't really want to acknowledge the past. Or look to the future.

Instead, as he broke the Dockers' record for most AFL games on Saturday, he asked his teammates one thing.

"And that was to live in the moment and play for each other," Pavlich said.

Pavlich played his 239th game as Fremantle scored an upset win over Adelaide in Adelaide, his birth place.

Surpassing Shane Parker's previous club record mark was hailed by his coach Mark Harvey as the motivating factor for the win.

But Pavlich - a six-time All-Australian and five-time club champion - downplayed the milestone.

"I didn't want to be disrespectful or dismissive of the record because I understand that it is significant given how young our club is," he said.

"But I didn't want it to be a distraction, I wanted it to be business as usual."

Pavlich acknowledged the past - only briefly, perhaps because it's too painful.

"I don't want to underestimate how challenging it has been at times during my tenure at Fremantle, 11 or 12 years of hard work, and we haven't had the sustained success that I would have liked as a team," he said.

And, again briefly, he touched on the future.

"We have got a really driven and motivated young group of players and we are starting to see the fruits of the labour," he said.

"... I don't know what that means in terms of the end of the year in ladder position, but I'm confident that we'll be highly competitive each week."

Then it was back to living the moment, insisting his day was significant moreso for the fact it lifted Fremantle's win-loss ledger to 2-1 than his personal achievement.

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