The man behind the name: Gary Ablett jnr lived in the public eye and stayed private

June 9, 2026 — 9:34pm

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Back in 2018, I sat down with a genial Gary Ablett, who by then had achieved so much on the field that it was no longer necessary to affix “junior” to the back of his name.

The interview, a couple of weeks before the 2018 season, was tied to the son’s return to Geelong after his seven years in Tibet – in exile from football’s main street, on the Gold Coast, where he had maintained his standing as the game’s most accomplished midfielder for four or five years, taking a second Brownlow and two further gongs as the players’ most valuable player.

Ablett was relatively relaxed, perhaps because he was happy back home in Geelong. A self-described introvert, he did not feel that he had been closed off from the public.

“I think I’ve always been a pretty open person,” he said. “I’d say I’m an introvert. I like to get to know people on a deeper level and really invest into a relationship. I’m not going to give you everything when I first meet you.”

One could gain small glimpses of a private public figure from talking to him, such as his adherence (then) to an organic diet that leaned paleo, and that he trained in runners rather than footy boots.

I had been told, some years earlier, that Ablett junior (as he would remain to older media who’d covered his storied father) developed cold feet about leaving Geelong following the 2010 season, but that the die was cast – he’d accepted the offer from the Suns (effectively the AFL’s) and had to go north.

“I think that’s better kept in-house,” he said.

It was impossible not to ponder what lay behind the gentle, super-polite persona of Ablett, if there was any torment and, if so, what had steeled him to achieve. In decades of speaking to footballers and sportsmen, it was rare to find one who had managed to........

© The Age