Over a decorated AFL career, Gold Coast SUNS skipper Gary Ablett has established himself as a contested football beast, ranking in the top four across the competition for contested possessions per game each season between 2008 and 2014.
The dual Brownlow medallist averaged an astonishing 17.5 contested possessions per game in 2014 before succumbing to a shoulder injury, but is well down on those numbers in 2016. He averages 12.5 contested possessions per game this season, ranked equal 17th in the AFL.
It’s an area of Ablett’s game in which his teammates have challenged him to improve, which will hopefully see the Little Master return to the lofty standards he has set for himself over the past decade.
“I need to get back to playing the type of footy I know I can play, that’s a contested brand of football,” Ablett told SUNS TV.
“It’s getting in, winning that contested ball and getting it out to our runners on the outside. That was probably the biggest area for me is I’m playing my best footy when I’m doing that so I was challenged from the boys to make sure I step up my game and I’ll be working on that this week.”
Nakia Cockatoo and Shane Kersten try to take Gary Ablett down
Monday’s well-documented team meeting at Metricon Stadium was one of the most confronting in club history, with a review lasting over two hours following Saturday night’s 120-point loss to Geelong.
Driven by the leadership group, players questioned one another in a no-holds barred type session with every single member of the team on the receiving end.
“We went through a lot of tape, we looked at some poor efforts and areas for improvement and we were pretty challenging on each other as a playing group,” Ablett said.
“We don’t want to stand for that; we’re an AFL side.
“At the end of the day the scoreboard’s probably irrelevant, we didn’t play the brand of football that we wanted to play.
“We had a game plan going into the game and we went away from our structures. That’s probably the most disappointing thing.
“We talk about it every week – there needs to be effort – and there just wasn’t effort there on the weekend.”
As a wise man once said, you can’t change the past, and the focus for the entire SUNS organisation is now Melbourne at Metricon Stadium this Saturday.
A win over the Demons will place Gold Coast back into positive territory at 4-3 and provides a great opportunity for the SUNS to pump some energy into a season that appears on the outside to be floundering.
“It’s disappointing but at the same time you move on, that’s in the past,” Ablett said.
“We’ve just got to move forward and make sure we have a good week on the track and we’ve got another great opportunity against Melbourne.”
