Gary Ablett Jr live stream: See the AFL champion play for Palmerston vs St Mary’s in a big NTFL clash

The star of the show 30 years ago was Gary Ablett Snr, but his eldest son - a ‘barefoot pest’ - wasn’t far behind as AFL royalty took the Northern Territory by storm.

Gary Ablett Jr was destined for greatness when he carried his famous father’s name on to Australian football’s playing arena.

The oldest of the Ablett brothers was just another promising junior at Victorian rural club Modewarre when he first picked up a football, but when he hung up his playing kit more than three decades later he was a legend of the game.

Born in the tiny hamlet of Modewarre, 90km southwest of Melbourne on Victoria’s renowned surf coast, the young Ablett had a football in his hands from the minute he could crawl.

He followed his dad, Geelong great Gary Sr, to training with the AFL club and on match days in a daily ritual that caught the eye of the football mad Geelong public and the players who wore the blue and white hoops.

Younger brother Nathan was an accomplice in those early days, both of the Ablett boys earning the combined nickname of “barefooted pests’’ as they engaged in kick-to-kick and handball sessions with Billy Brownless, Mark Bairstow, “Buddha’’ Hocking and Paul Couch among a bevy of Cats.

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Gary Ablett Sr is grabbed by an overzealous fan in the three quarter break of the Northern Territory Football League vs. Geelong Cats exhibition match on January 25, 1992.

It was around this time when I met both brothers, who were already featuring in the eyes of the adoring Geelong football public and a frantic media keen to get to know about the sons of an AFL gun.

My first meeting with Gary Jr was in Darwin when he reluctantly came face-to-face with giant saltwater crocodiles.

The second occurred at Darwin’s TIO Stadium 17 years later when his new club Gold Coast were beaten by the Western Bulldogs in their 2012 premiership season game.

Now he is back for a farewell tour of Darwin, wearing black and white stripes for the first time in his life as a Palmerston footballer.

I had met his mercurial dad at the old Waverley ground in Melbourne 1987 when I’d gone to watch a family friend, Marty Christensen, ply his trade with Geelong in a come-from-behind win over Collingwood.

Eight years later Gary Sr was in Darwin as a special guest of Northern Territory Football League and in his wisdom decided to bring Gary Jr and Nathan, then aged 11 and nine, to the Top End of Australia.

Both youngsters were just two more kids among the throng of juniors at TIO Stadium a day after their dad’s speaking engagement, enough for this writer to quickly analyse their appetite for the game and their natural skills.

Fortunately, the NTFL had organised an Auskick session that day, the ideal platform for the Ablett boys to show their skills among fleet-footed and extraordinary indigenous youngsters equally keen to impress.

Gary Ablett playing for Geelong their encounter with Port Adelaide in an AFL NAB Cup game in Darwin on March 3, 2003. Picture: Terry Trewin

But their dad’s itinerary included a tour of Graham Webb’s Crocodylus Park at Berrimah at the same time, a favourite haunt of interstate tourists and one would assume, a magnet for two Victorian kids about to get a rare sight of the dangerous saltwater crocodile.

But the Ablett boys wanted out of there. The lure of a football and pitting themselves against Territory kids who could spin out of tackles as easily as them was too much for Gary Jr as he told his brother more than once.

He convinced his dad to let him get back to TIO Stadium in tandem with Nathan, even employing this football writer to drive them back to the ground as quick as he could.

Both Ablett boys had no problem joining in the Auskick session, grabbing marks, kicking the footy at all angles and displaying evasive skills the local kids were mightily impressed with.

Abandoning the tour of Crocodylus Park after five minutes, employing a driver to get them back to TIO Stadium ASAP and running on to No. 2 oval while still pulling on a guernsey, was proof that Australian football was king in the Ablett household.

“We’d rather play footy than watch crocs’’ was junior’s request to his dad, a tactic that worked a treat when this writer was thrown into the driver’s seat of an NT News car.

The Ablett brothers eventually played 391 AFL games between them, Gary Jr’s 357 with Geelong and Gold Coast contrasting sharply with publicity-shy Nathan’s 34 at the same clubs, including Geelong’s 2007 premiership win.

Gary Jr won everything up for grabs in the toughest football competition in the land, two Brownlow medals, eight All-Australian jumpers, five Leigh Matthews trophies as the AFL’s most valuable player and two premiership medallions with Geelong were just some of his trophies.

Now, at age 38, he is set to make his third and last appearance at Darwin’s TIO Stadium in the black and white stripes of the Palmerston Magpies in company with former Geelong teammate and good mate Mathew Stokes.

Old Father Time may have wearied him, but the consummate skills and football appetite I saw when he was a youngster in Darwin 27 years ago will again be out in force.

Originally published as Gary Ablett Jr live stream: See the AFL champion play for Palmerston vs St Mary’s in a big NTFL clash