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<\/p>\nGold Coast\u2019s first superstar player and inaugural AFL captain, Gary Ablett jnr, is backing the Suns to shine when they make their belated maiden debut in the AFL finals on Saturday.<\/p>\n
Ablett, 41, let out a happy sigh when asked about his reaction to the Suns making it into Saturday\u2019s elimination final against Fremantle in Perth; their first final after 15 years in the AFL.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Noah Anderson of the Suns runs with the ball.Credit: Getty Images<\/p>\n
\u201cOhhh. It really did mean a lot,\u201d Ablett said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019ve never played finals football, so to get a taste of that is fantastic for them and, hopefully, they can put in a good performance in their first final and get a win.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019ve got such a fantastic young list and I\u2019ve spent a bit of time with those guys and they\u2019re just doing a really great job. You\u2019ve got a really young list and you\u2019ve got to develop the right way, they are playing a really great brand of football at the moment and they are only going to improve.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ablett left Geelong to launch the Suns in the AFL in 2011, and led from the front in 110 games for the fledgling club, becoming it\u2019s first \u2013 and, so far only, Brownlow medallist in 2013.<\/p>\n
He also won the best and fairest award in the Suns\u2019 first three seasons before being cut down with injury, then recovered well enough to win the award for a fourth time in 2017 \u2013 his final year at the club before returning to Geelong for three swansong seasons.<\/p>\n
He still plays football occasionally, and was a marquee player in last week\u2019s AFL Legends game at Marvel Stadium, which was when he spoke to our scribe Roy Ward.<\/p>\n
Asked by Ward about the possibility of his two clubs meeting in a knockout final this year, Ablett chuckled and said he wasn\u2019t sure which team he would support in that circumstance.<\/p>\n
\u201cI haven\u2019t really thought about it,\u201d Ablett said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is a chance it will happen. I obviously like cheering both teams on and want to see them do well.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ablett was initially recruited to Geelong in the 2001 \u201csuper draft\u201d as a father-son selection.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Gold Coast\u2019s first superstar player and inaugural AFL captain, Gary Ablett jnr, is backing the Suns to shine…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":122885,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[560],"tags":[638,64,63,55,639,85],"class_list":["post-122884","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-afl","tag-afl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-australian-football-league","tag-australianfootballleague","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122884","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=122884"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122884\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/122885"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=122884"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=122884"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=122884"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}