He was the man John Longmire turned to last season, but Kieren Jack is just one of a number of Swans that could be assigned the job no AFL footballer wants – stopping Gary Ablett.

“He’s the best, there’s no doubt about that,” Jack said of the Gold Coast captain ahead of Sunday’s match at Metricon Stadium.

“He’s a unique midfielder, he’s got a lot of different assets. He’s very strong, he reads the ball very well, he’s quick, he’s fit, he’s good in the air, he’s good on the ground.

“For years he’s been very hard to match up on and for years we have struggled to deal with him a lot of the time.

“One of the advantages we have now is a lot of players who are defensively minded so we think we can probably cover him as a group.”

While the class of fellow co-captain Jarrad McVeigh (27 possessions, four goals) and out-of-favour midfielder Ryan O'Keefe (27 possessions, two goals) helped the Swans’ get over the line in a scrappy 41-point affair at the SCG last year, it was Jack who stole the show on the day the Swans unveiled their 2012 premiership flag.

The 2013 All Australian kept to 24 touches; his third lowest disposal return from his 2013 Brownlow-medal winning campaign.

Jack picked up a game-best 28 possessions of his own, firming his growing status as one of the game’s most damaging midfielders.

But the 26-year-old isn’t treating his expected match-up with Ablett lightly, knowing only too well the how dangerous of an accumulator he can be.

Fresh off an AFL Rising Star nomination after his fourth AFL start, Jack headed into his first battle against Ablett with a world of confidence, only to be shot down from the opening bounce.

“I was on a bit of a high and we went down to Geelong where I had the task of manning up on Ablett,” recalled Jack, who is now a Swans co-captain.

“He ended up with 35 possessions and three goals and pretty much won the game for them.

“It was a great learning curve for me. For the first three quarters I thought and the coaches thought we did a pretty good job on him.

“He hadn’t kicked a goal and had a little bit of the ball but wasn’t that dangerous.

“In the last quarter he just turned it on, kicked three goals and had 10 or a dozen possessions.

“That’s a snap shot of what he can do to you as a club. I’ll never forget that game, just how good he was as a player and still is.

“I was really confident. I had played on Daniel Kerr and done really well and then all of a sudden it was almost like it was the next level of where I had to get to.

“I remember coming away thinking they were a special club and he was a special player.”