Ablett kicked a further five goals in the second half, which saw an injury-depleted Hawthorn's lead reduced to just 6 points with less than a minute to go. However, the Cats fell short, and Hawthorn held on to defeat Geelong in one of the toughest grand finals of the modern era, winning by 6 points. Ablett's 9 goals also saw him equal Gordon Coventry's goals record set in the Grand Final. Ablett began the season with 59 goals after just 11 games, placing him second on the goalkicking list behind Hawthorn's Jason Dunstall.
In these games, he kicked 10 goals against Richmond in the Anzac Day game, and 11 against Brisbane—one shy of breaking the ground record of 12 goals at Carrara. Although he missed out on State honours and failed to place within the top three in the club best and fairest award, Ablett finished with 82 goals during the season for the second time in his career.
With his contract expiring at the conclusion of the season, Ablett shocked the VFL by signing a new five-year contract with his former club, Hawthorn. After a "cooling-off" period, however, Ablett opted to remain with Geelong by agreeing to a lucrative five-year contract that tied him to the club for the long-term. In , Ablett became a born-again Christian and has been said to be slightly aggrieved at constantly being referred to as "God" by fans, a nickname based on his supreme football abilities.
Ablett's faith was often highlighted in several tribunal appearances, in one case confessing and pleading guilty to striking Garry Lyon in a incident, declaring he "wasn't prepared to lie about it or compromise the truth in [his] relationship with God". Ablett's public acknowledgement of his faith, in particular the influence of God in his life, during his acceptance speech for the Norm Smith Medal in the Grand Final, was also much publicised.
Playing mostly on the half forward flank, Ablett won the club's goalkicking award for the following two seasons with 82 and 65 goals respectively. Although Ablett had developed a reputation for his laconic, lazy attitude to training under coach John Devine , this did not prevent him from earning top three placings in the best and fairest awards from — In , Ablett wed his long-time girlfriend Sue, and the couple had four children — Natasha, Gary Jr.
Ablett's footballing ability soon came on notice again, this time to the Geelong Football Club and their long-time recruiting officer Bill McMaster. McMaster convinced Ablett to give the game another shot, this time in the confines of the rural city of Geelong. Ablett signed a one-year contract for the season with Geelong, and he began his first season under the guidance of Tom Hafey.
He debuted for the Cats in Round 7 and after just nine games on the wing, Ablett was selected to his first State of Origin game for Victoria. Ablett earned best-on-ground honours after kicking 8 goals from the half-forward flank. He played 15 games and kicked 33 goals in the season, and was awarded the Carji Greeves Medal as the Geelong Football Club's "best and fairest" player of the year.
Following his first season with Geelong, Ablett signed a new three-year contract with the club. Ablett had a prolific State of Origin career, kicking 43 goals in 11 games. He was first selected to play for Victoria in , against Western Australia, only nine games into his career at Geelong, kicking 8 goals in a best-on-ground performance.
Ablett performed well again the following year, kicking 4 goals against South Australia. In the following few years Ablett was largely out of the side, apart from , when he kicked 2 goals against South Australia.
Ablett again performed at the highest level in , kicking 6 goals, against Western Australia in Perth. After returning from retirement midway through , and after only several games, Ablett was controversially selected for Victoria, kicking 2 goals. In Ablett performed well, kicking 3 goals and being named among the best players, against Western Australia.
In he kicked 4 goals, against a combined New South Wales—Australian Capital Territory side, and in the same year Ablett again performed on the big stage, kicking 5 goals in the State of Origin Carnival Grand Final. In Ablett kicked 4 goals, against South Australia, in what has been regarded as "one of the greatest Australian football games of all time" and followed up that performance with 4 goals against South Australia in On representing Victoria, Ablett has said "I've always found it a tremendous honour to represent your state, in a State of Origin game".
However, he struggled to adjust to city life and retreated to Myrtleford the following year. The Geelong Football Club managed to lure him back to professional football in , and by the late 80s, he had become one of the VFL's biggest stars.
His VFL Grand Final appearance, during which he kicked a grand final record nine goals for a losing side, is regarded as one of football's greatest individual performances, earning him the Norm Smith Medal. At the beginning of the season, Ablett shocked the football world by abruptly announcing his retirement from the game, but made a comeback midway through the year.
He went on to appear in the , , and grand finals, before officially retiring after the season. After signing a reserves contract and featuring in six reserves games for Hawthorn, Ablett retreated back to his home in Drouin.
He returned to Hawthorn in and made his senior VFL debut versus Geelong in Round 2, kicking 1 goal and helping the Hawks defeat the Cats by 19 points. He played a further five games for Hawthorn that year for a total of six games and ten goals. Ablett claimed difficulty coping with city life in Melbourne and his continual absenteeism from training sessions forced Hawthorn coach, Allan Jeans into parting ways with the talented, but wayward young half forward.
In , he moved to the country town of Myrtleford under the tutelage of his cousin Len Ablett. The Cats posted a point win against the Demons. Ablett kicked seven goals, and helped set up another meeting with Essendon in the Preliminary Final. Ablett kicked 8 goals this time, as the Cats crushed Essendon by 94 points to advance to their first grand final since Cats supporters wept in the aisles.
After the presentation, hundreds of people swarmed the 22 men wearing hooped jumpers in the subterranean cauldron of the winners' rooms. In a fleeting moment of semi-privacy, year-old Gary Ablett Jnr slouched by his locker, silently appraising the scene before him. A Cats trainer arrived with a message: "Gary, your Dad's just outside the rooms. The newly minted premiership stars walked towards their famous father for the most significant embrace of their football lives.
It was a surreal few seconds. So overwhelmed were the trio by this moment of sporting deliverance, none could find words. Tears flowed in their place. Their heads shook in sync. Three sets of eyes scanned the room, asking a question: is this even real? Gary told Gary he'd cut his medal in half, that it belonged to both of them. Inevitably, the spell was broken when others noted the symbolic power of the scene. Cameras swivelled, reporters and backslappers rushed in.
Cornered again by prying eyes, the Ablett men instinctively went their separate ways, not to reunite until a few days later — a quiet cafe meeting with yet more head-shaking and unhidden emotion. Over coffee, there were finally some words. Gary Ablett Snr had spent many years of a troubled adult life warning his children not to seek their identities in achievements and acclaim.
Yet here he was admitting the opposite, telling his sons they'd filled a giant hole in his life, mending a pain that nothing else could remedy. Perhaps now he could move on from the personal and professional failings that haunted him. The Ablett boys beamed with pride. Thirteen years on, as Gary Ablett Jnr farewells football on the appropriately grand stage of a premiership decider, we are almost numb to the enormity of his achievements. A pair of premiership and Brownlow medals, eight All-Australian blazers, six club best and fairest awards and five Leigh Matthews trophies headline an astonishing CV.
Such sustained dominance has Ablett achieved — close to a decade as the standard-bearer of a golden generation of midfielders — places him in the rarest company.
Between and , when injuries started blunting his brilliance, Ablett was unstoppable. Sitting in the stands, Gary Snr was often left amazed that his son could withstand his weekly batterings from taggers and still come out on top.
His AFL Tables page became a statistical shrine. It is not even slightly absurd to say that Ablett could and probably should have won five Brownlow medals, perhaps four in a row: he might have snatched his clubmate Jimmy Bartel's award, and was so miffed by the '08 result, he almost skipped his triumphant count; in these stats-obsessed times, it's perverse to consider that in , Ablett had more regular season possessions and 30 more goals than the winner, Chris Judd.
Maybe was his most ridiculous year, confirming why his second team, Gold Coast Suns, built an entire franchise around him. Ablett put on a clinic almost every week, but suffered a career-altering injury after 15 games. It opened the way for a Steven Bradbury-style finish to the medal count. Runner-up Nat Fyfe and winner Matt Priddis bettered Ablett by only three and four votes respectively. In those years, 30 possessions to Gary Ablett Jnr was one of life's few certainties. When Nathan Ablett quit after 32 games for Geelong, his misgivings mainly related to the very public pressures of AFL life.
Taller and broader than his brother, Nathan's personality was smaller. He could be worn down by the expectations that accompanied his surname. More comfortable with the rhythms of country leagues, he also chafed at the ceaseless commitments of big-time football. At times, it made him miserable.
It takes only basic levels of empathy to understand his vanishing act, just as it requires only modest powers of deduction to understand Gary Jnr's resilience in the face of similar strains. In fact, the pressure on Gary Ablett Jnr was always two-fold: he was the second coming of Gary — the eldest and most talented son of the man many considered the greatest player to walk the earth.
Old-timers recall only Ted Whitten Jnr carrying a similar burden with anything like Ablett's grace. We could also consider the fate of another son of sporting royalty, John Bradman, so overwhelmed by attention in his teens that he chucked in cricket at the first opportunity. For many years, he changed his famous surname too.
In early boyhood, Ablett took the opposite approach to John Bradman, steeping himself in Geelong lore. He was a constant, pestering presence on the training track and in the rooms at Kardinia Park during his father's career, and one folded quickly into the other; it is remarkable to consider that Cats fans endured only five Ablett-less seasons between the coming and going of Garys.
Both were unerringly modest about their abilities and men of faith — the older a cautionary tale, the younger the closest thing to a Christian role model in Australian sport. Where Gary Snr grimaced and gave the press nothing, Gary Jnr smiled obligingly and was often happy to chat. Yet he revealed just as little. Of course, Ablett Jnr ended up a far different player than his father, lacking the marking prowess and versatility but exceeding him in most other categories, on and off the field.
Yet their physical resemblance — the pear-shaped physique and the hunched shoulders — was irresistible to romantics, as was Gary Jnr's tendency to kick the impossible goal. Geoffrey Blainey once wrote that if you had a foreign tourist assess the physical attributes of each player before a Geelong game, they would never pick Gary Ablett Snr as the champion of the bunch. The same was true of Gary Jnr, but within minutes of play commencing, there would be no doubt you were witnessing greatness.
There is a story from Gary Jnr's youth that Bill Brownless tells often. Determined to teach the pesky older Ablett boy a lesson in the Geelong rooms one night, Brownless drilled a Sherrin straight and low towards Gary's head. No sooner had it left Brownless's boot than Ablett spun to face him and marked the ball with one grab, directly in front of his face.
Like so many challenges thrown at him down the years, Gary Ablett Jnr had risen to the occasion and left those around him shaking their heads. It is strange to consider now, but at the beginning of his AFL career, Gary Ablett Jnr fought private battles in his mind: on one hand, there were plenty of boosters declaring him a future champion the minute he arrived at Geelong, which filled him with paradoxical insecurity that he wouldn't measure up; doubters made sure Ablett overheard claims that his surname alone had won him his opportunities, which motivated him to succeed.
In this light, his ability to forge his own identity is a hallmark of his greatness. Geelong, to its credit, did everything in its power to coddle and protect Ablett in the early years of his career, preventing undue attacks on a sensitive soul. Two years before the club secured him with pick 40 of the fabled 'Superdraft" thanks to the father-son rule, Ablett was only a half-hearted footballer. At Modewarre FC his talent was clear, but Ablett applied himself more seriously to basketball, surfing and skateboarding — pursuits that relieved him of comparisons with his father, but surely assisted the ambidexterity, balance and daredevil swooping that later underpinned his football brilliance.
At AFL level, any doubts about his prospects quickly disappeared. His first four seasons were all floppy hair and bouncy, jinking runs around the forward flanks. In seasons two through four, Ablett averaged 30 goals and led the club in tackles. Ablett Sr's son, Gary Ablett Jr, also considered one the greatest players of all time, has suffered his fair share of heartache from his son's battle with a rare degenerative disease, the recent loss of his mother-in-law to cancer and his sister's fatal drug overdose.
The year-old won two premierships with Cats in and before he joined the Gold Coast Suns in , spending eight seasons before the tragic loss of his sister Natasha in late Natasha, 35, was found dead in a friend's front yard in Geelong following a lethal cocktail of illicit drugs including fentanyl, hours after she fled a mental health clinic. The eldest of the Ablett siblings, Natasha struggled with mental health and drug issues for many years and battled schizophrenia since she was a teen.
Alisha Ablett paid tribute to sister Natasha in a heartfelt Instagram post following her death in saying growing up with her and their brothers Gary and Nathan was the 'worlds best gift'.
As grateful as I am for my career and everything that has come with it, having it consume most of my life has meant that other areas have had to take a back seat during that time.
Ablett Jr's surviving sister Alisha posted a heartfelt tribute to her Instagram page with an old family photo of the four children. Natasha - you were the strongest woman I've ever known with an absolute heart of gold! Ablett Jr and his wife Jordan also recently mourned the loss of her mum Trudy pictured with grandson Levi.
A coroner found earlier this year that Natasha was a frequent mental health facility escapee who fled 36 times throughout her troubled life. Ablett paid the ultimate tribute to Gary Jr in his son's soon-to-be released autobiography, hailing him as the greatest midfielder to play the game. If you or someone you know is experiencing personal problems, contact Lifeline on 13 11 The views expressed in the contents above are those of our users and do not necessarily reflect the views of MailOnline.
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