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Well into Gold Coast’s sixth AFL season, it’s time to acknowledge a fundamental truth with the benefit of hindsight – the Suns made a mistake by targeting and recruiting Gary Ablett.
This is not to question Ablett’s talent or ability. After all, he is not known as the little master for nothing. He was unanimously regarded as the best player in the competition for close to a decade, and even at the start of this season was ranked at number two in our Roar Top 50.
As a club, Gold Coast felt they needed immediate relevance, and thus went after the biggest name in the game, and the best player many have ever seen.
It was sound enough in theory. After all, who better to teach a raft of talented young players than the man who had the highest standards and could see the game five and six moves ahead?
But, as we’ve seen all too often in recent years, just as a champion player does not make a good coach, perhaps a champion player does also not make a good figurehead to build a new club and team around.
No-one ever saw Ablett as a natural leader in his Cats days. Without thinking, you could reel off half a dozen Geelong teammates that you’d have ahead of him in the leadership stakes in his time there. Possibly more.
When he plays hurt, everyone watching knows about it, carrying himself in a way that we all can see where he’s hurting, and so we can give him an excuse for not having his usual impact. He’s not exactly from the David Boon school of stoicism, unperturbed after being hit by yet another Curtley Ambrose bouncer.
And while Ablett the man could be dissected, with his flaws and vulnerabilities as a leader of men exposed, Ablett the player was not what the Suns needed. He was too good. His genius and desire for the ball counted against his team. They became too reliant on him. He became too enamoured with his own statistical prowess, fuelled by fantasy teams dominating the footy landscape.
Consider the following Ablett statistics from Gold Coast’s first two seasons, when they won a combined six games. He played 40 matches in that time, but was injured early in one of them and didn’t return.
From his 39 full games Ablett averaged 32.7 disposals across 2011-12.
In 33 losses he averaged 34.1 disposals, with 23 games of 30+ possessions, including eight matches in the 40s and one in the 50s.
In six wins he averaged 25.3 disposals, only topping 30 once. In fact, he only had more than 27 touches once in those wins. In three of the wins he had 23 possessions or less.
It’s a vast differential that explains a team in its formative years with an unhealthy reliance on their superstar. When Ablett was quieter, other teammates stepped up and a team effort delivered victory.
Let’s not forget, Geelong won the premiership the year after Ablett left. Hawthorn won two flags in a row after Buddy Franklin departed. Adelaide are playing football at least the equal of any they did with Patrick Dangerfield in the team, and arguably better.
When you have a superstar in your midst, they dominate proceedings to such an extent the shadow they project covers their teammates in darkness.
Ablett’s 2013, when he won his second Brownlow, and 2014, up until he suffered a season-ending injury, produced the best football of his career, a remarkable feat when you consider the half a dozen years that preceded it.
Gold Coast appeared to be progressing well, with the superstar leading the way. Eight wins to the Suns in 2013 and nine from their first 15 matches in 2014. They weren’t just relying on him in losing games, he was winning them off his own boot too.
In more than half of those wins in 2013-14, Ablett had 30 or more disposals and kicked multiple goals. His averages in those wins were 32 touches and two goals per game.
In 2013-14, with Ablett in the side the Suns were running at a winning percentage of 46 per cent. For the remainder of 2014 and 2015 when he only played six matches, without Ablett the Suns winning percentage was 17 per cent.
When he wasn’t there, they couldn’t handle it. Could it be because they were protected in the early years, and none of his teammates had to fend for themselves? They did in some of those wins, sparingly spaced though they were. But they weren’t given enough responsibility in those times to truly grow and mature at the rate demanded.
We live in a society now where the ‘helicopter’ parent is to the fore, always hovering around their children to try and protect them from all the little bumps, bruises and mistakes that make-up a childhood, even though the best way to learn is always from doing.
Gold Coast unwittingly fell into the same trap with Ablett. Whether it be conjuring up a match-winning goal, winning a Brownlow, or defying all-comers with his statistical prowess, he was always a part of the football conversation, keeping the Suns relevant even while they floundered.
Ablett has been the captain for his entire time at the Suns, a club that has fostered arguably the worst culture in the AFL. He must be held accountable for it. So often we hear talk of strong leadership from AFL clubs and the media that report on them. If it all isn’t just hyperbole, then there must be weak leadership too, given everything exists on a pendulum.
That said, the Gold Coast has long been a Bermuda Triangle for professional sports teams. No code can seem to make it work.
The Suns are dying, with only a barren desert in front of them, now that the mirage of three early season wins has passed. Two young guns, Jaegar O’Meara and Dion Prestia, are out of contract, and would be committing an act of lunacy if they signed.
Opposition clubs will be able to prize them away by offering up draft picks, and then what? More 18-year-olds will walk into the club to waste their talent away.
And the biggest waste of all? That Gary Ablett, the finest player of his generation, if not of all time, has spent his prime years on a redundant mission to turn a start-up club into successful one.
It might not be anyone’s fault, but it will go down in history as one of AFL football’s great shames.