Ablett hype played down
GEELONG coach Chris Scott won’t be expecting miracles when Gary Ablett squares off against his former Gold Coast AFL teammates for the first time tomorrow.
The Suns finally return to Metricon Stadium – after it was temporarily reconfigured as an athletics venue for the Commonwealth Games – to host a Cats side featuring their departed skipper.
Ablett, 34, has averaged a team-high 29 possessions in six matches this year in his second coming as a Cat, without threatening to scale the previous heights of a career including two Brownlow Medals and six best and fairest awards for the Cats and Suns.
“We expect him to keep building his form, keep building his match fitness,” Scott said.
“We don’t expect him, and I don’t think we really need him, to go out there and get a whole lot of the ball and be best on ground necessarily.
“In fact, I think he could be best on ground with 20 touches instead of 40 if he plays the way he can play and uses the ball really well and helps our team on both sides of the ball.
“I think it’s a mistake to judge his game on possessions.
“I know in the past he has been a 40-possession plus player who just accumulates, and I think he’ll have games like that for us as well, but we’re not trying to set the game up for that.”
The sixth-placed Cats are coming off a dour 28-point home win over bottom team Carlton in a spectacle Scott labelled “horrible”.
He’s expecting a tough, contested affair against a Suns outfit who have won three of their opening nine matches – all on the road – under firstyear coach Stuart Dew, who did his apprenticeship at Sydney with John Longmire.
“I wouldn’t be so disrespectful to just say that Stuart Dew has taken what he helped build at Sydney and tried to replicate it at the Gold Coast,” said Scott.
“But some of the things that industry insiders like about the way the Swans play – a hard contested team, really good transitioning team, high workrate team – we’re seeing at the Suns as well.”