GREATEST OF THE GREATS
DAISY Pearce’s declaration that Dustin Martin is the best AFL player in history — and Garry Lyon’s somewhat less emphatic suggestion Nat Fyfe could finish his career as the game’s greatest — should be taken for what they are.
It’s sports radio fodder that should spark fun conversations at the pub about your favourite players — not drive you to deliver angry, defensive diatribes about how disrespectful they are to the legends of former eras.
But we are at risk of recency bias influencing the way we think about the likes of Leigh Matthews, Wayne Carey, Tony Lockett and the most freakish of all, Gary Ablett.
Which is why a new book about the 1989 Grand Final by Tony Wilson, who was on Hawthorn’s list during its heyday in the late 1980s, is perfectly timed.
If you don’t know about Ablett’s greatness — or were beginning to forget — the words of his contemporaries in Wilson’s pages leave no doubt about his position in the pecking order of the best to ever lace up a boot.
The 1989 decider between the Cats and Hawks was the crowning moment of Ablett’s career, even if he fell short of an elusive premiership. He won the Norm Smith in a sixpoint defeat after kicking nine goals in a game that’s remembered for its high-scoring and heavy hitting, but also the outrageous talent of one man.
“People love the game just because of Ablett,” Wilson writes. “It’s such a fast contest, and with so many individual acts of skill, but Ablett’s freakishness sits beyond them all.
“If they ever rate the Norm Smith of Norm Smiths, surely this is the one.”
Minded for most of the game by one of the greatest fullbacks in history — Hawk stalwart Chris Langford — Ablett took soaring marks, kicked goals from everywhere and made his presence felt with unapologetic physical force.
“He was just completely playing his own game,” Langford said. “Which is when he was great … When he played well, he was completely oblivious to anyone else, either the opposition or his own teammates. He did not play to a structure, he’d just see the ball, and get the ball, and he’d do things that no one would even think of doing.”
The day after the match The Age’s Martin Flanagan wrote: “The game was Ablett’s in the same way as magic was Merlin’s.” What a line.
We’re not here to compare Ablett to Martin — or Fyfe — but 30 years before sports science would hand the modern player every advantage it could to create peak performance, Ablett was a pure physical specimen of the rarest kind.
Here’s how teammate Bruce Lindner described his power in Wilson’s book.
“(Cats ruckman) Darren Flanigan is six foot, seven and built like a Greek Adonis; Gary Ablett is six foot, one,” Lindner said. “But if you met somebody in a dark alley … who’s the person you’d least like to meet?
Gary Ablett … Gary would be the last one you’d like to take on. He was a serious athlete in the sense that it’s all explosive muscle.”
Explosive was a commonly used word to describe the man known as God.
“He’s the most explosive player I’ve ever seen,” Cats coach Malcolm Blight said.
“And when you think about it an explosion is as good as it gets, as big as it gets. It’s like a bomb going off, a shell from a cannon. He changed more games than any other player I’ve ever seen.
“In a game you could see him, he almost got on his toes,” Blight added.
“It was like a prancing horse. He was so quick. He was really quick, and he could really hurt. And he could get to full speed in three steps. He was a freak.”
Before his Geelong glory days, Ablett played at Hawthorn, where his brother, Geoff, played in 200 games and two premierships and was known as the fastest man at the club after winning the Grand Final Day sprint a record four times.
Hawks champion Robert DiPierdomenico told Wilson about his memories of a young Gary at one of his first pre-season trainings, racing Geoff over 100m. Gary won by three metres. “We thought, ‘What? That can’t be right’,” DiPierdomenico said.
“Even then he was the best footballer I’d seen,” said Hawks great Peter Curran, who played reserves with Ablett in 1982.
“When you were growing up, you were hoping to be the best kick, the quickest player, the strongest player, the highest high mark, the best set shot for goal, the best snap at goal — you’d hope to get proficient at some of those. Well, he was all of those,” Lindner added.
The best part of bold statements like Pearce’s and Lyon’s — at least for the person making it — is you can quibble over what words like “best” and “greatest” mean.
The black spot on Ablett’s resume is his lack of premiership success. His eccentricities and desire to train and play by his own rules are also held against him.
“He’s the most compelling player of all time,” Wilson wrote. “So spectacular, so gifted, so enigmatic and yet so difficult. Ablett made watching footy so much fun, the most fun, and yet his team’s lack of premiership success in his time raises a recurring question. Did the accommodation of his eccentricities and whims hurt the team?
“Of course, you can look at it the other way too. Ablett was granted allowances by his coaches, nursed through periods of indifference and distraction, and he repaid the Cats with a thousand goals and four Grand Finals — unfurling in one of them, the greatest goal spree of all. Who knows, without the Great Gazza, the Cats might have been anchored mid-table.”
Consider me convinced. Now we just need similar books about Lethal, Plugger and King Carey.