To be fair, you couldn’t blame him for avoiding the spotlight back in 2002, his first season with the Cats. He carried the same moniker as his father, Gary senior, who was still enjoying rock-star status at Geelong despite the fact he was battling some very public personal problems, and on-field comparisons between father and son would be inevitable.
The Cats went to extraordinary lengths to nurse 'junior' through those early days. There were no interviews, very few public appearances and certainly no chance he would don the No.5 his father and most Geelong fans wore through the 1980s and 1990s.
I was fortunate to be granted an interview with him for the AFL Record in 2003 after he’d undergone some media training but the conditions were so strict I wasn’t sure who I was interviewing.
My questions had to be sent in advance, the club’s then media manager sat in on the interview and despite some prompting and cajoling from myself and the media man, it’s fair to say young Gazza wasn’t giving a lot of himself.
Fast-forward to today’s version of Gary Ablett - we can drop the ‘junior’ tag now - and the difference is night and day.
The hair is long gone, he is an accomplished media performer and he can be spotted anywhere from the Birdcage on Derby Day to the beach at Jan Juc.
Today, however, his surfing and football interests are a long way from Skilled Stadium and while Geelong fans still quietly weep at that thought, his life has moved on.
Perhaps those Cats supporters will be thinking: 'What if?' What if Gazza had been appointed captain of Geelong 12 months ago and he and Mark Thompson had formed a close bond as coach/captain?
In the words of Dale Kerrigan in The Castle, "tell ’em they’re dreamin". The Cats could hardly appoint a captain who could not commit beyond the end of the 2010 season and ignore a fierce loyalist such as Cameron Ling.
The notion that your best player must be captain didn’t apply in Ablett’s case at Geelong but it certainly does for the Gold Coast Suns.
A contradiction? For Ablett to be appointed Geelong captain he had to commit long-term to the cause and the fact he didn’t eventually ruled a line through his relationship with Thompson. The result was predictable: Gazza was shown the money and he followed it north.
Today, there was no other choice for the Suns than to name their highest profile recruit as their inaugural captain.
Ablett is just one of 12 players on the Suns’ list of 53 with AFL experience. He signed a five-year deal to move to the Gold Coast and unlike his old man, who was a reluctant captain of Geelong in the mid-1990s, Gazza will relish the challenge.
He’s certainly come a long way.
Recap of the live chat with Michael Lovett
The views expressed in this article are those of the author and not necessarily those of the AFL or its clubs
