D facts say Gazza’s about the greatest

IT was Brownlow Medal night 2009 when Adam Cooney delivered one of the most famous kisses the AFL had seen since Allen Jakovich planted his lips on his brother Glen.

Gary Ablett, the son of perhaps the greatest player of all time, was finally rewarded with the league’s highest individual honour after three years of dominance in the midfield for Geelong.

Cooney, as the 2008 champion, presented Ablett with the medal and proceeded to place his lips on the Cat star’s cleanly shaved head.

It brought loud applause, and even a smile from the newly crowned winner, although a couple of years beforehand he may not have found Cooney’s antics quite so funny. Ablett was fighting a losing battle with his hair that his close friends had witnessed for several years and housemate Jason Davenport, being the great friend that he is, decided to take the matter into his own hands. “Externally we could all see it was time but internally he was fighting his own demons and didn’t want to part ways with it,” Davenport said. “He was working away one afternoon on his computer and enough was enough. I walked in with some scissors and (sneaked) behind him and took a big chunk off what I thought was the back. I snipped it off the back but it actually created a hole in the front as well, so he’d obviously pushed it forward. “To say we laughed about it at the time would be lying. He was actually quite upset and agitated by it all, but I just felt as a friend I’d given him enough verbal truths about parting ways with his hair. It just got to a point where I thought it had to go, I was doing him a favour and that he’ll s see down the track the funny side o of this. “He had that little fluff cut in the ’07 grand final and th then obviously parted ways with it an and now he has that signature, beautif beautiful bald head of his.” Ablett’s gradual a acceptance of his hair loss was in some ways akin to the way he became more comfor comfortable in his own skin as a footballer at the elit elite level. Being the son of any clu club champion come comes with an unn unnecessarily lar large amount of pr pressure that fe few would u understand, but in a oneteam town like Geelong, and with a name that had become synonymous with individual brilliance, the M Modewarre p product was de dealing with a lev level of hype hith hitherto unseen. It saw Ablett being characterised in some quarters as stand-off stand-offish and petulant, b but another close friend o of his throughout a n nine-year stint at Geelong, 2007 and 2009 premiership forwar forward Shannon Byrnes, wrote yesterd yesterday that it was a gross misrepresenta misrepresentation. “It wasn’t until afte after the first couple of years at the club that his personality came out because of the pressures that came in his first years of playing,” Byrnes wrote on the AFLPA website.

“From then on he was a lot more open to everyone, but early days you had to get to know him to understand what type of person he was.

“That wasn’t him being rude or arrogant, it was just him keeping out of the spotlight from all the pressure placed on him.”

Davenport, who was in Ablett’s wedding party last year, echoed Byrnes’ sentiments.

“The thing with Gaz is he is an extremely engaging, welcoming and infectious person, and all in a very positive way,” Davenport said.

“The moment you spend enough time with him to separate what he does, you quickly forget what he does. I think he has other passions in life and that starts with his friends and his family.

“As diligent and committed as he is as a football player, he is far more passionate about his friends and his family and I think that’s a really strong reflection of his character.

“He is a very, very loyal person and a very generous person, and you can’t help but be attracted to personalities like that.”

Fifteen years after his senior debut with the Cats — a 50-point defeat at the hands of Essendon — Ablett’s record stands alone.

On Sunday he will notch game No.300, a feat that will sit nicely alongside his two AFL premierships, a VFL premiership, two Brownlow medals, five Leigh Matthews trophies, eight AllAustralian guernseys and five club best and fairest awards.

Getting to this point in his career, though, has been a tough road for Ablett.

Tim McGrath, a teammate of his back in 2002 when he first graced the MCG stage as a Geelong player, recalled that in the early days there were several young Cats ahead of Ablett, and that it was only through sheer hard work and perseverance that he didn’t fall off the radar at Kardinia Park.

“On face value that first year there were quite a few of those young lads that were in front of him. Physically and mentally they were a lot further in front,” McGrath said.

“I played a lot in the VFL that year but in different games I got to see a fair bit of them and their improvement, and at training Bartel, Kelly, Johnson and Chapman were miles ahead of him. But in saying that there were some things he did in games where you stood back and said, ‘Whoa, did you see that?’

“You just thought if this kid ever gets it all together he could seriously play, but it was a matter of whether he was going to be able to do that. He was pretty quiet but he obviously took a lot in — it’s a great effort.”

Ablett was famously told by his senior teammates during the 2007 preseason that he needed to train harder if he were to fulfil his obvious potential.

But he had endured challenging discussions well before this, including in his time with the Geelong Falcons when the team’s football manager Michael Turner dropped him for missing the bus to Warrnambool ahead of a training session.

“I put my hand up and say it was my call to drop him but it wasn’t anything to do with form or misbehaviour,” Turner said.

“I was very wary of what his dad was like at Geelong because Gary used to be late for games and training and I just didn’t want him to get into the habit of doing any of that early in his career.

“But anyone at AFL level who has dealt with him would tell you he is a super professional.

“Not because of me, but because of him.”

Turner was a teammate of Ablett senior and saw up close some of the old man’s genius.

But despite high praise for all of the high marks and freakish goals, he reserved the ultimate compliment for the man chosen at pick No.40 in the 2001 draft.

“I played a lot with his dad and I think his dad was the greatest individual player ever and the most spectacular, but I’d rate Gary (junior) as the No.1 player I’ve ever seen and I’ve been watching footy for a long time,” Turner said.

“The shine has gone off a little bit because of injuries to his shoulder in the last couple of years, but if you go back three or four years when he was winning all the MVPs and Brownlows, I think most people were saying he was the greatest player.

“I’ve seen Leigh Matthews and all those blokes. I haven’t seen a better player than Gary Ablett.”

The final chapter in his tale is still to be written, but 15 years after the slightly built youngster from Modewarre stepped on to football’s biggest stage, Gary Ablett junior stands among the greatest it has produced.