Gary Ablett Jr: Geelong Cats great’s revelations at AFL grand final function

Gary Ablett Jr has revealed he was on track to never grace Kardinia Park and instead had another professional sporting pursuit on his mind.

Cats great Gary Ablett Jr has revealed he nearly opted for a different sporting path.

After offering some amazing tidbits and anecdotes at a grand final breakfast at the Sporting Globe on Saturday – along with his correct predictions for a big Cats win – he told the Addy about the sliding doors moment that delivered him into footy folklore.

“Not a lot of people know this, but early in my teenage years I actually lost interest in football. I had some other passions at the time, I had mates who were into their skateboarding and surfing, so I actually wanted to be a pro surfer for a couple of years,” Ablett said.

Geelong recovery at Jan Juc in 2008. Gary Ablett Jr surfs

“It wasn’t until the age of 16 I was actually invited down to the Geelong Falcons by Mick Turner at the time, and I’d had a really good year as a 15-year-old playing some local football and they said they’d love to get me down to try out for the Falcons.”

“For me, even at that time, I wasn’t sure if that’s what I wanted to pursue.”

GAZZA QUICK-FIRE Q&A

The window for the Cats, is this coming to the end of something or is it a new beginning almost? “I think we’ve got a really good balance between younger guys and a few guys who are at the peak of their powers, and there’s obviously going to be a few guys who retire in the next couple of years. But when you’ve got guys like Parfitt, O’Connor that would probably get a game at most other clubs who are missing out, that’s a really good sign. It means we’ve got a lot of depth. and there are also some young kids we drafted last year as well, by all reports who have been playing some fantastic footy in reserves and are gonna get a taste of finals footy next year. So I think we’re in a really good position, there’s no doubt about that, and I think we’re going to have a lot of success over the next five or 10 years.”

Gary Ablett and Joel Selwood of the Cats walk off after their 350 and 300th games respectively. Pic: Michael Klein

Best teammate? “It’s a tough one, I could get myself in trouble here. I’m going to have to go with Joel Selwood, followed closely by Cameron Ling. The reason I say those two guys is, obviously we’ve seen the way they play football, but off the field they’re just two quality human beings that really care about the people around them.”

From a footy IQ perspective, the easiest teammate to play with? “Footy IQ I’d say Stevie Johnson, but I won’t say he’s the most predictable or easy teammate to play with. He is a guy who could frustrate you at times … but then he’d do the impossible. He could win a game off his own boot. Some other guys who stand out to me, Paul Chapman had a great IQ, a player that I don’t think gets enough credit for how good he was throughout his career is Darren Milburn, he was a guy that would just read the play really well, control our structure down back but would also attack as a backline player at the right time as well. And then Jimmy Bartel is the other one who stands out for me.”

Ablett rates Darren Milburn, pictured here spoiling in the 2009 AFL Grand Final, as his most underrated teammate.

Most underrated teammate? “Most underrated, I always go with Darren Milburn for the reason’s I’ve said. I just don’t think he got enough credit for how important he was to our structure back in those years where we had a lot of success”

Moment missed in your career, what frustrates you as a competitor that you saw slip away? “It would be the ‘08 grand final without a doubt. I still believe that year is the best list that we had. I think we lost one game throughout the season. We went into that game very confident, and I still believe if we played them 10 times we would have won nine out of 10. So yeah, we let that one slip.”

The best payer you’ve played against (or most difficult opponent), and overall favourite non-Cat player? “The best players I’ve played against is Chris Judd and Lance Franklin. the reason I say those two guys is they’ve been able to play at a high level over a long period of time, so they haven’t just had three or four good years, they were at the top of their game for 10-plus years.’

Scott Pendlebury is Gazza’s favourite player to watch (Photo by Dylan Burns/AFL Photos via Getty Images)

Favourite player to watch? “I’ve really enjoyed watching Scott Pendlebury, he’s obviously a really smooth mover, uses the ball well, very good footy IQ, it’s like the game slows down for him. He was a guy I took a lot away from when I was playing, I used to watch a lot of tape on other players to help improve my game.”

The biggest pest? “The guy’s name is Ryan Crowley. Ballantyne is the other one, he’s probably number two. I want to tell you a story about Ryan Crowley, because we had many great battles over the years, but this is from the first time we matched up on each other. I still remember during the week Mark Thompson coming up to me and saying ‘I think you’re gonna get Ryan Crowley this week’, and he was the premier competition tagger at that time, he said ‘I think you should go away and do your homework’.

Fremantle Dockers player Ryan Crowley was Ablett’s No. 1 pest. (AAP Image/Tony McDonough)

So I went and watched hours of tape and thought ‘yep, I know Ryan Crowley’s strengths and weaknesses, I felt I was pretty prepared going into the game. Sure enough the start of the game Ryan Crowley comes to me, he’s pinching me, standing on my toes punching me, he’s doing everything he possibly can to put me off my game, and it would have been about 15 minutes into the first quarter and the ball goes out of bounds, and I’m standing there waiting for the ball to get thrown in, and in my peripheral I can see Ryan Crowley standing two meters away from me staring at me, and I thought ‘this is interesting’, because normally he’s right up on me pinching me, punching me. So I decided to turn and look at his and he had this big smile on his face, and went on to tell me for the next 10-15 minutes of the quarter that he believes I’m the best player in the game and it’s an honour to play on me, he believes I’m going to go down as the greatest player in history.

And at that time I’m thinking ‘this guy’s not actually too bad’. Anyway we get to the end of that quarter, and it might be 10-15 minutes into the second and same thing happens. Ball went out of bounds, in my peripheral I could see Ryan staring at me from two meters away, and I thought ‘here we go again., some more positive feedback’, so I turn to him but he had a completely different look on his face, he had this look in his eyes like he was angry at me, and he went on to tell me he believed I was the biggest cheat in the game, I get handballs around the back, he doesn’t even rate me as the top 100 players in the league. I learned pretty quickly that was one of Ryan Crowley’s tactics to put you off the game. And it actually worked for him that day, I think I only had 13 touches and Freo went on to win the game.”

Originally published as Gary Ablett Jr: Geelong Cats great’s revelations at AFL grand final function