The Gold Coast Suns should trade Gary Ablett at the end of the 2017 season, writes Jon Ralph

IT is time for the Gold Coast to set Gary Ablett free and give him the best possible chance of peeling off one more great season as a Sun, writes JON RALPH.

Has Gary Ablett done enough on the Gold Coast? Picture: Getty Images

NO one begrudges AFL players when they depart as free agents after years of service.

Everyone understands when the desperately homesick decide it is time to return to home and hearth.

When players have unique and complex family circumstances clubs almost always find a way to agree to trade requests.

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Gary Ablett fits the latter two criteria and by the end of next year will have given seven extraordinary years of service to the Suns.

Time for the Gold Coast and Ablett to set him free and give him the best possible chance of peeling off one more great season as a Sun.

Gary Ablett has stepped down as Gold Coast captain. Picture: Daniel Wilkins.

Gold Coast chairman Tony Cochrane was talking tough again on Wednesday about getting his pound of flesh, determined to get two more seasons out of Ablett.

“Gary Ablett is an absolute 110 per cent required player at the football club,’’ he said on SEN.

“Gary wants to carry on with us, that is not something the board has debated or is going to debate.”

It isn’t going to happen.

There seems no possible circumstance in which Ablett will play again for the Suns in 2018, whether they hold him to his deal or not.

Granted, for him to ask for a trade home only a year after signing a three-year extension is strange, but then again he is a member of the enigmatic Ablett clan.

If the Suns agreed to either trade Ablett to Geelong at the end of next year or let him retire, it can only be a positive for their fortunes in 2017.

They free Ablett mentally and put him in the state of mind to secure his legacy at the club with one more stellar season.

They dodge yet another year of “will-he, won’t-he” drama after a full 12 months of speculation about Jaeger O’Meara and Dion Prestia.

And just maybe they get a nice little draft pick from Geelong, a club that already has plans to have another crack after this year’s aborted trade.

That deal would see Ablett forced to accept as little as $400,000, but after amassing more than $10 million in career earnings surely that is a deal he is prepared to accept.

Ablett has been the captain for all of the Suns’ six years, won their first three best-and-fairests, won their only Brownlow, been their only real frontman.

In 2014 he finished fourth in the best-and-fairest from just 15 games, this year he finished sixth after playing only 14 games.

Only Tom Lynch has more goals, only six Suns have played more games.

What more do those who would see him stay for the 2018 season want from him?

He was the first man to agree to terms with an expansion club, and if he took the money it should be remembered Geelong still offered him $1 million a year from 2011-15.

Gary Ablett (middle) celebrates the 2009 premiership win with teammates.

Instead he put his faith in the Gold Coast and hoped to redefine his leadership after being typecast in that role at Geelong.

He has not been the best captain in the AFL — far from it — but he has been the best he can be.

What message does Gold Coast send its newly drafted bunch of kids if it holds Ablett against his will past next season?

When he left Geelong they would have accepted seven years of brilliance in a flash, but to hold him past that is bloody-minded and wrong.

Originally published as The Gold Coast Suns should trade Gary Ablett at the end of the 2017 season, writes Jon Ralph