Ablett: Mission Impossible

[Rockford]

Article on Gary in The Age.

NORTH Melbourne players were told not to tackle him. In the grand final, Hawthorn had a plan to prevent him from getting second possessions, to stop what is known as the "give and get".

Port Adelaide's Kane Cornes, usually a scrupulous ball player, used a more old-fashioned tactic - jumping on him, with extreme prejudice. Sam Mitchell, another player who doesn't normally hunt heads, tried the coathanger on grand final day.

Whether they're sophisticated, modern tactics, or primitive biffo, there is no method to stop Gary Ablett from getting the ball. Cornes couldn't curtail him with crude force, and Dean Laidley's radical edict - to eschew tackling and corral him - didn't work either.

Scragging brings only limited results, and there isn't a tagger in the game with the package of attributes - pace, aerobic fitness, immense core strength and footy smarts - to shut him down; for if a player had all of those traits, he wouldn't be a tagger.

http://www.theage.com.au/news/rfnews/gary-ablett-mission-impossible/2009/04/08/1238870032459.html

 

[Cohzee]

Awsome picture.

 

[rizzo]

Awsome picture.

Thanks for posting! Amazing photo!

 

[cat in sydney]

The little genius!

 

[Big Nasty]

Crap I forgot to put that article in Catscan.

 

[Rockford]

Awsome picture.

One of my mates took a look at this photo, laughed and said "Cat amongst the pigeons."

 

[CF]

great photo can you email the bigger version so I can turn it into a wallpaper for the PC

 

[caitsith01]

Yeah, anyone know where to get a better quality version of this, or a print?

 

[Barnzy]

Awsome picture.

Too busy watching his awsomeness, they forgot to chase him.

 

[bomberstomake8]

Article on Gary in The Age.



http://www.theage.com.au/news/rfnews/gary-ablett-mission-impossible/2009/04/08/1238870032459.html

id love to see ling play on ablett one day being told his job is only to shut down ablett.

how do you guys think that would turn out

 

[cat in sydney]

id love to see ling play on ablett one day being told his job is only to shut down ablett.

how do you guys think that would turn out

Not even Lingy would get close to shutting Gaz down, not without a lot of assistance from others at least.

 

[Rockford]

Not even Lingy would get close to shutting Gaz down, not without a lot of assistance from others at least.

He'd get close IMO.. Ling as a tagger hurts teams going the other way too.. he'd force Gaz to be accountable.

 

[DanA]

Ling's got the strength and endurance to go with Ablett but he'd be cut up on the handball recieves where Ablett runs around the player. I don't think Ablett would win nearly the level of contested ball he gets now though.

 

[Asty]

Like with all other midfielders Ling would give Ablett a very tough day. In close ling has the strength and awareness to make Ablett really work and would hold the tackles. If ablett got half a yard of space though his acceleration would have him away from ling. And as mentioned the handball recieves would have ling working pretty hard.

 

[Micksy]

If you make a wallpaper CM don't forget to upload

 

[reidy75]

"Sam Mitchell, another player who doesn't normally hunt heads, tried the coathanger on grand final day."

Does Jake Niall actually watch football? Mitchell is one of the chief snipers, the Grand Final made it a bit more obvious as he couldn't get a touch so resorted to more of it than usual.

As for Ling on Ablett, I'd imagine there's a fair bit of that at training to help both develop their games.

The challenge for a tagger is having a good enough motor to keep going, remembering (a) the amount of work the rest of Geelong do to get Gaz the ball, and (b) the amount of work the rest of Geelong do to physically punish the tagger. To stay on top for the entire game is very, very difficult to do in light of that, and he doesn't need to get away for too long to be very effective and damaging.

Personally I think he's already got the license for a bit of unaccountable football, so I wouldn't expect to see him working hard to shut down Ling - that's what the team, zone defences, etc. are for. There's already times the guy playing on him has plenty of the ball (I'm thinking Bateman) but Ablett and the coaching staff seem happy that he'll be more damaging than his opponent = fair call!!