Gary Ablett Jr has been inducted into the Australian Football Hall of Fame alongside five other new members, completing one of the most extraordinary father-and-son stories the game has ever produced. The recognition places the two-time Brownlow medallist alongside his father, Gary Ablett Sr, in the sport’s most prestigious honour roll — a feat no other family has achieved.
A legacy that spans two eras #
For many Victorian football followers, particularly those in the Geelong corridor and across regional communities where the Cats command fierce loyalty, the Ablett name is not simply a surname — it is a shorthand for footballing brilliance. Gary Ablett Sr carved his legend at Kardinia Park through the 1980s and into the 1990s, his freakish athleticism and goal-kicking feats becoming the stuff of local mythology. His son, who grew up watching that legacy from the inside, went on to surpass even those lofty standards in the eyes of many who study the game closely.
Gary Ablett Jr played 375 games across his career with Geelong and the Gold Coast Suns, won the Brownlow Medal — the award for the competition’s fairest and best player — in both 2009 and 2013, and claimed two AFL premierships with Geelong in 2007 and 2009. He was named in the All-Australian team on nine occasions and captained the Gold Coast Suns, a club he helped establish as an expansion side from 2011. By any statistical or reputational measure, his case for Hall of Fame elevation was considered beyond dispute long before the formal announcement was made.
What the Hall of Fame actually means #
For readers who follow the game casually, it is worth explaining what the Australian Football Hall of Fame represents and why an induction carries weight beyond the usual awards season. Established in 1996 by the AFL, the Hall of Fame exists to permanently recognise players, coaches, umpires, and administrators whose contributions to the game are considered enduring and exceptional. Unlike the Brownlow or the Norm Smith Medal, which are awarded annually, Hall of Fame selection is a deliberate, retrospective judgment — a committee of football historians, journalists, and former players assesses a candidate’s full body of work, their impact on the game’s culture, and their standing relative to the all-time greats.
Within the Hall of Fame there is a further distinction: the status of Legend, reserved for those whose contribution is judged to be without peer. Gary Ablett Sr holds Legend status. Whether his son will eventually be elevated to that tier remains a matter of debate among selectors, but observers widely regard it as a question of when rather than if.
What it means for Geelong and the regions #
In regional Victoria, where football is not merely a sport but a central thread of community identity, the Ablett story resonates differently than it might in a metropolitan context. The Geelong Football Club draws its heartland from communities stretching across the Surf Coast, the Bellarine Peninsula, and deep into western Victoria. In towns like Colac, Winchelsea, and across the Barwon region, Saturday afternoon games and the fortunes of the Cats are woven into the rhythm of local life in a way that is difficult to overstate.
Gary Ablett Jr’s career bookended a golden era for the club — from the 2007 premiership that broke a 44-year drought, through the back-to-back years of dominance in the late 2000s, to his decision to leave for the Gold Coast in a move that was widely felt across the club’s supporter base as a genuine loss. His eventual return to Geelong for his final seasons, culminating in a third premiership in 2022 that he was part of in a supporting capacity, completed a circle that many long-time supporters found deeply satisfying.
The six inductees and the broader class #
Ablett Jr was among six new members named in this year’s induction class. The AFL has not yet published the full official citations for each inductee at the time of writing, but the cohort is understood to include former players from multiple clubs and eras, reflecting the selection committee’s practice of honouring contributors across the full breadth of the game’s history rather than concentrating recognition on any single period.
VCN understands the induction ceremony was held in Melbourne, with former players, club officials, and family members in attendance. The Hall of Fame now recognises well over 100 inductees since its establishment, with Legend status conferred on a much smaller group of around 15 individuals — a threshold that underlines the rarity of the distinction Ablett Sr already holds and that his son may one day join.
A father’s shadow — and a son who stepped out of it #
It would be easy to frame Gary Ablett Jr’s career entirely in reference to his father, and for a time during his early years at Geelong that framing was unavoidable. He was, in the eyes of the football public, first and foremost Gary Ablett’s son — a designation that carried both expectation and a particular kind of scrutiny. What emerged over the course of his career was something more complicated and, ultimately, more impressive: a player who absorbed that weight, developed his own game, and produced a body of work that stands on its own terms.
Coaches and teammates who worked with him have spoken publicly across multiple interviews and media appearances over the years about his preparation, his durability — managing serious injury including a debilitating shoulder condition in his later years — and his capacity to perform at elite level across an unusually long career span. His 2009 Brownlow season, in particular, is frequently cited by statisticians and historians as one of the finest individual campaigns the modern game has seen.
For his father, who won his own Brownlow in 1984 and is widely regarded as one of the two or three most talented players the game has produced, the symmetry of sharing the Hall of Fame with his son is a distinction without precedent in the sport’s history.
What happens next #
The AFL’s Hall of Fame selection process continues on an annual basis, with the committee reviewing eligible candidates — generally those who have been retired for a minimum number of seasons — each year. Ablett Jr’s induction closes a chapter that many in the game had long anticipated, and attention will now turn in part to which members of the cohort that surrounded him during Geelong’s dominant years may follow in subsequent rounds of selection.
For supporters in Geelong and across regional Victoria, the formal recognition is unlikely to change the way the name Ablett is spoken about at local clubs, in pub conversations after a Saturday game, or in the kind of heated debates about the all-time greats that are a staple of football culture in this part of the state. What it does is place that conversation on permanent institutional record — and ensure that future generations encountering the Hall of Fame for the first time will find two members of the same family waiting for them there.
Gary Ablett Jr is the first player to join a parent in the Australian Football Hall of Fame. It is, by any measure, a fitting end to a story that began in the stands at Kardinia Park and ran for the better part of half a century.
