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Ablett saga a Cats distraction

By Mr Dandalooa

Reigning premiers Geelong only lost 11 matches in the past three seasons.

But while they are one of the most successful teams in the modern game, the Cats are yet to nab back-to-back premierships.

So for a club that boasts Brownlow medallist Gary Ablett, one could speculate that this season that’s exactly what they’re vying for.

However, the kerfuffle over Ablett’s future could be a sticking point for Geelong’s premiership defence and has caused coach Mark Thompson to air his frustration publicly.

Geelong president Frank Costa says the whole saga could be tearing the club apart.

Thompson first urged Ablett to stay with the Cats, but in recent time publicly said he suspects his future has already been decided.

It’s a sense of negativity and a reflection of pessimism that highlights the immediate power Gold Coast seem to have in poaching big wigs of the game.

“Everywhere the poor bugger goes he gets bombarded with questions about Gary Ablett,” Costa said of Thompson.

“We saw in the grand final last year how close the competition is and the top four from last year are going to be all very competitive this year… it’s going to be very tough.

“They talk in footy about the one-percenters [such as] having your players distracted.

“Everywhere those footballers in Geelong go, all their mates and anybody that sees them [asks] ‘what are you doing about Gary Ablett, are you going to keep him or is he going?’

“Thompson was just up to his eyeballs with it and unfortunately he’s a human being and he was frustrated, that’s why he said what he said.”

But Costa believes Ablett will stay.

He said this could be helped by third party sponsorship deals, which would make Gold Coast’s financial leverage a smaller difference.

In such a level competition and with the two new teams coming in, it appears that it will get harder to stay in finals contention on a regular basis let alone win a second premiership.

So Ablett’s decision could come down to the accolades he would like to achieve as an elite AFL player, and not just the dollars.

With money breeds greed. And greed is an ugly trait.

Winning will depend on Geelong’s will and hunger, but with or without Ablett they still appear to be ahead of the rest of the competition in most measures.

This is despite some controversy and negativity to plague the club in recent times.

The off-fields antics of Mathew Stokes will be treated seriously for one.

But then there are few losses to the Cats’ impressive playing list, except for inspirational skipper, Tom Harley, who has retired, but it would seem they will lose nothing in the captaincy ranks with Cameron Ling replacing him and already under his leadership.

Injuries, which is an important factor in how any AFL team performs, seems to have evaded Geelong who welcome back defender, Josh Hunt from a knee reconstruction, with tall defender, and former Docker Marcus Drum, a chance to replace Harley.

The Cats remain premiership favourites for many punters although the Ablett card is a major aspect to this.

And it is this wild card that stems Thompson’s comments from irritation about the constant speculation of his decision, and the potential to divert the focus needed for the challenge of claiming a third flag in four seasons and a back-to-back premiership.

FootyGoss has learned that the Cats would not rush Ablett into divulging his decision on where he would play next season and Costa doubts there would be an answer until at least July.

“As with every other time Gary’s contract’s come up, we don’t really talk about it until the second half of the year,” he was reported as saying.

“That’s the way he likes to approach it, he doesn’t want to be pressured, he wants to concentrate on getting himself right for this year and playing the best footy he can.

“In my opinion it would be negative to our best interests to put pressure on him.”

Gold Coast senior coach Guy McKenna sympathises with Thompson, but has said that the incoming club did not plan on making any player announcements until the after the season.

McKenna said some of the speculation on the back page of the papers tended to be around one player (Ablett) but he thought it was “much deeper than that”.

“We’ll certainly make an announcement when we’re in a position to announce something and that’ll be at the end of the year,” he said.

“September, October we can talk to players and start talking to the media about where we’re at with our list and we should be in a position to go out with our full playing list around October.

“But more importantly in November this year we actually start preparing for the 2011 AFL season.”

FootyGoss understands that Gold Coast is prepared to offer Ablett a deal worth $1.5 million a season for five years.

When the club enters the AFL, Gold Coast will be able to recruit a maximum of one out-of-contract player from each of the 16 existing clubs before entering the competition as the 17th team.

Club chief executive officer Travis Auld said they would likely only target eight to 10 uncontracted players, though.