Cam Mooney recalls the Leading Teams moment the left Geelong legend Gary Ablett in tears
He’d just finished third in the Geelong best and fairest, but things were far from rosy for a 22-year-old Gary Ablett and the Cats. Former teammate Cam Mooney tells the story of the tough day a legend was made.
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It was the end of a disappointing season in 2006 where Geelong finished 10th after starting the year off as one of the premiership fancies.
A young gun named Gary Ablett, son of a club legend, had finished third, behind Paul Chapman and Jimmy Bartel in the club’s Carji Greeves Medal for best and fairest player and led the Cats’ goalkicking in his fifth season.
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But something wasn’t right — and Ablett was the only man in the room who didn’t realise it.
The unrest at the club led to the introduction of the controversial Leading Teams strategy, where players gave honest — and often brutal — feedback to their teammates.
“Everyone gave it to Gary,” teammate Cam Mooney recalls.
“I can’t say who individually spoke, but we spoke as a team to Gaz — Gaz walked out of the room in tears.”
“We told him ‘you don’t train hard enough, in the gym, on the track’, and he was devastated.
“He couldn’t believe it, he thought he trained hard.
“He finished third in the BnF the year before and literally his work ethic was horrible.”
Mooney said the playing group “absolutely sprayed” Ablett, because he wasn’t living up to his potential.
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“We said ‘you could be our Chris Judd’, Chris Judd being the best player on the competition at that time,” Mooney said on Fox Footy Live.
“He ran out the room crying.
“I don’t think he came back for three days.”
It was harsh, it was brutal, but the tough made the man.
Ablett would become All Australian for the first time, win the club’s best and fairest, the Leigh Matthews Trophy and the AFL Coaches Association Champion Player Award and helped the Cats break a 44-year premiership drought.
“(He) finally came back, pulled his finger out and became, I think the best player we’ve seen in the modern era,” Mooney said of the now 35-year-old who returned to the Cats at the end of 2017 after seven years on the Gold Coast.
Ablett, in 2014, addressed the tale, admitting it sparked him into action.
“I do think back to that, where the boys really sat me down and said ‘we think you can work harder on the training track and there are so many areas where you can improve’,” Ablett said.
“As hard as it was at the time, I walked away from that and thought ‘you know what, these boys really believe in me and there’s a lot of improvement left in me’.
“So it was a good thing.”
As far as the feedback for Mooney?
“We really like you Moons, but gee you get in some trouble, we’re sick of backing you up here,” Mooney, who was suspended on four separate occasions in 2006.
Originally published as Cam Mooney recalls the Leading Teams moment the left Geelong legend Gary Ablett in tears
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