Gary Ablett and Geelong restart their Last Dance with perfect AFL draw

Gary Ablett could have been forgiven a fist pump as he restarts AFL’s version of The Last Dance.

Gary Ablett and his veteran teammates at Geelong are the real winners from the new AFL fixture. Picture: AAP

As Geelong’s stars got back to contact work at GMHBA Stadium on Monday, Gary Ablett could have been forgiven a fist pump as he restarts AFL’s version of The Last Dance.

The league on Monday delivered a fixture that gives Sunday night football a realistic chance of survival in a draw that does all it can to satisfy the league’s broadcast partners. But amid the flurry of blockbuster games and compromises made to get away 144 games, Ablett and his veteran mates were the real winners.

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Ablett is in his last season of AFL, quietly hitting 36 years of age in recent weeks and aware there is no 2021 for him.

His captain Joel Selwood turns 32 on Tuesday, Harry Taylor is 34 next month, Tom Hawkins 32 in July and Patrick Dangerfield, Zach Tuohy and Jack Steven have all hit 30 in recent months.

Geelong’s much-lauded warriors will never have a better chance to set up a premiership tilt than in a season where they could play every home game at their fortress, the old Kardinia Park.

It is a venue where they have lost only four of their past 37 games, albeit rarely against footy’s superpowers.

But the advantage the AFL has handed Geelong is the perfect platform to set up another top-two home-and-away finish.

The big wins there hand them valuable percentage points and allow them to rest older players late in games to conserve energy for mightier battles ahead.

And while the finals question marks will linger, they will tell themselves they dispatched concerns last year that they are a flat track bully who struggled at the MCG in finals.

Others will reserve their judgment, but Geelong were an hour of finals football away from smacking that assertion out of the park last year.

The Cats last year knocked off Collingwood (Round 1), Hawthorn (Round 5), Essendon (Round 7), and Richmond (Round 12) at the MCG in a quartet of exceptional home-and-away performances before a late-season loss to the Hawks.

At the MCG in finals they lost by 10 points to Collingwood and beat West Coast, and while they faded against Richmond, they showed they can handle the wide-open expanses of that venue.

Geelong’s Round 2 opponents Hawthorn face an unenviable month of footy — against GWS, Richmond and the Cats — while West Coast face Richmond in a home game in Queensland. AFL fixturing boss Travis Auld admitted the league simply ran out of games to schedule the Eagles in while they remain in a hub, but surely they would have accepted anyone else but the premiers.

Everything about the trends of world sport would suggest Sunday night footy is crucial if the AFL is to maximise its TV dollars.

Sunday night football was an attendance fizzer when Carlton and Collingwood played a contentious Sunday night game in 2014, with just 40,939 fans at the MCG but a massive TV audience of 1.019 million fans. If it rates it socks off on Fox Footy as an exclusive property, look for it to become a regular fixture in years to come.

The league has created a Super Sunday of football featuring nearly eight hours of consecutive matches in 1.05pm, 3.35pm and 6.05pm timeslots. Auld admitted on Monday the slot would not work for every market when crowds returned, given the league’s determination to maximise attendances.

But the league has committed to that fixture at least until crowds return, starting with a clash between winless St Kilda and the Western Bulldogs at Marvel Stadium on June 14. Fremantle and Port Adelaide play in the Sunday evening slot in Round 3, followed by Hawthorn and North Melbourne (Marvel Stadium, Round 5) and then GWS v Hawthorn (Giants Stadium, Round 6).

The slot will allow the league to run three games that do not overlap on Sundays in a new triple-header format.

“It works. We have had one example in Round 1. This is really an opportunity to trial some things,” Auld said. “It has worked in Round 1 without crowds. The question is if we do have a crowd coming back this year or next year, does it still work in every market? I am not sure. I can see us having more Thursday nights this year, so we will take advantage of those opportunities. That will need to be reassessed going forward as the fans have the opportunity to attend games.”

HERALD SUN