[flawed hero] the tragedy of gary ablett
Sunday, March 04, 2007
As John Harms put it succinctly, to spare you a along biography:
Whenever I saw him I was amazed by his brilliance, skill, explosive power, physicality. I cringed at his brutality. I wondered why he rarely smiled. The club consistently helped him to organise the most basic elements of his life. He was attracted by the Christian message and became involved in various local churches but never tackled the hard asks of that religion. His on-field performances were so dazzling that people came to matches just to watch him. His marriage failed. He continued to amaze on the footy field.
But injuries caught up with him and he faded away. As he saw it all disappearing, he said to his manager, "It's not going to finish, is it?" He drifted into a cavalier life of alcohol and drugs. When they found 20-year-old Alisha Horan had died in a hotel room as a result of a lethal combination of heroin, ecstasy and amphetamine, Ablett was the one who'd been with her for days. She'd been one of his adoring fans but he left her there at the hotel.
Garry Linnell, who wrote an excellent biography of the man summed him up thus:
Ablett lacks self-belief. He needs constant reassurance. He has a "natural sullenness" and is prone to periods of depression. He is full of paradoxes. He is, at times, cunning, at other times naive and childlike. He hates the fact that fame steals much of his freedom. He struggles with the expectation of the people in the crowd. He has little regard for time and "no internal clock". He can be unreliable and irresponsible. People make excuses for him.
They wanted to draft him into the Hall of Fame but a huge groundwell of opposition kept him out. Ablett himself begged them to stop nominating him so that he could find some peace. Irascible, disinclined to give interviews, uncooperative in his biography, a recluse who nourished obscurity, he all but disappeared from the radar.
His sons now play for Geelong and one of them has done particularly well. The other shows signs of his father's nature.
The story of the surf and the horses is as good a way to end as any. Sports reporter Stephen Phillips was assigned to produce an Ablett video compilation and he remembered Ablett once saying he often rode horses in the surf near his home. Enthused by this idea, Phillips suggested he shoot Ablett from a helicopter while the star crashed through the waves.
"Could I have a ride in the helicopter?" Gary asked.
Two days before filming was due to start, Phillips said to him: "You got the horses ready? I’ve got the chopper organised."
"What horses?" replied Gary. "I don’t have horses."
Phillips said, "Well, I’m filming this thing in the chopper."
Ablett responded, "What chopper?"
John Harms: Play On: A Sporting Omnibus, [Text, $25];
Garry Linnell: Playing God, The Rise and Fall of Gary Ablett, [Harper Collins, $29.95].
Whenever I saw him I was amazed by his brilliance, skill, explosive power, physicality. I cringed at his brutality. I wondered why he rarely smiled. The club consistently helped him to organise the most basic elements of his life. He was attracted by the Christian message and became involved in various local churches but never tackled the hard asks of that religion. His on-field performances were so dazzling that people came to matches just to watch him. His marriage failed. He continued to amaze on the footy field.
But injuries caught up with him and he faded away. As he saw it all disappearing, he said to his manager, "It's not going to finish, is it?" He drifted into a cavalier life of alcohol and drugs. When they found 20-year-old Alisha Horan had died in a hotel room as a result of a lethal combination of heroin, ecstasy and amphetamine, Ablett was the one who'd been with her for days. She'd been one of his adoring fans but he left her there at the hotel.
Garry Linnell, who wrote an excellent biography of the man summed him up thus:
Ablett lacks self-belief. He needs constant reassurance. He has a "natural sullenness" and is prone to periods of depression. He is full of paradoxes. He is, at times, cunning, at other times naive and childlike. He hates the fact that fame steals much of his freedom. He struggles with the expectation of the people in the crowd. He has little regard for time and "no internal clock". He can be unreliable and irresponsible. People make excuses for him.
They wanted to draft him into the Hall of Fame but a huge groundwell of opposition kept him out. Ablett himself begged them to stop nominating him so that he could find some peace. Irascible, disinclined to give interviews, uncooperative in his biography, a recluse who nourished obscurity, he all but disappeared from the radar.
His sons now play for Geelong and one of them has done particularly well. The other shows signs of his father's nature.
The story of the surf and the horses is as good a way to end as any. Sports reporter Stephen Phillips was assigned to produce an Ablett video compilation and he remembered Ablett once saying he often rode horses in the surf near his home. Enthused by this idea, Phillips suggested he shoot Ablett from a helicopter while the star crashed through the waves.
"Could I have a ride in the helicopter?" Gary asked.
Two days before filming was due to start, Phillips said to him: "You got the horses ready? I’ve got the chopper organised."
"What horses?" replied Gary. "I don’t have horses."
Phillips said, "Well, I’m filming this thing in the chopper."
Ablett responded, "What chopper?"
John Harms: Play On: A Sporting Omnibus, [Text, $25];
Garry Linnell: Playing God, The Rise and Fall of Gary Ablett, [Harper Collins, $29.95].
Labels: flawed hero, gary ablett, tragic life
posted by James Higham at 09:47
3 Comments:
Great post about someone I'd not heard of- being born in the 80s was a disadvantage. But for a while I thought that Gary Ablett was a Liverpool full back I'm glad to be enlightened that there was another Gary Ablett.
The man was a genius, unfortunately.
Without question, Ablett was the most talented player I've seen. Two games come to mind as perfect examples of his type of brilliance. Firstly, round six 1993, Essendon vs Geelong. Ablett kicked 14.7 in a losing team, the highest individual score for a losing side. Secondly, the '89 grand final when he kicked 9.1, again in a losing team. On both days he was best on ground by a mile, and while he seemed to inspire awe in all around him, he remained unable to inspire real confidence in his teamates and lead them to victory. Despite all this, there was no player I enjoyed watching more when I was a kid.
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