IT SEEMS remarkable now to imagine it was ever the case, but Gary Ablett jnr was nervous and fighting off self-doubt when he first walked into Kardinia Park as a long-haired hopeful young draftee.

He enters the Australian Football Hall of Fame from that 2001 'Super Draft' as among the very greatest to have taken the field so far this century, with a CV so stacked that the discussion around his name at this selection year's meeting took only enough time for everyone to simply say, 'yes'.

HALL OF FAME Check out the inductees, Legends and more

Dual premiership player, dual Brownlow medallist, six-time club best and fairest, eight-time All-Australian, five-time players' MVP and three-time coaches' best player across a 357-game career at Geelong and Gold Coast, with nearly 450 goals thrown in for good measure.

Plaudits that simply defy belief at times, but don't tell the story of a player who was beautifully skilled on both sides as a one-touch ball-winner, brave, fast, agile, strong for his size, composed in the heaviest of traffic and who always made the right decision with the ball.

What the fans never saw was the thousands of hours of work he did perfecting his skills and honing his body to become great, coupled with a rare competitive streak that lives within all the greatest of champions.

And, well after it's all over now, the satisfaction that he gave his best.

"I've been reflecting on what it means to be recognised for the Hall of Fame at the end of my career," Ablett says.

"It's a great honour and I think back to all the hard work that was involved. I've been incredibly fortunate to have team success and have recognition for individual awards and I'm very proud of the work I did to make myself the best I could be."

Unfailingly polite and modest, he had no idea of the waiting time qualification rules for the Hall of Fame when the call came in February, which put him in that small group of recent players to be chosen at their first year of eligibility.

"In 2002, I was really nervous at the start when I walked into the club. I really wasn't sure if I was going to be good enough," he says.

"My goal was to do enough in the first two years to be able to get another contract.

"I wanted to make the most of my first contract and I think for any young player, having that self-belief that you can do it, is a huge thing to be able to make that step into league ranks."

As a child, Ablett was regularly around the Cats' rooms as he and brother Nathan would tag along with their father, Gary snr, for his training sessions.

Gary jnr picked up a footy and played, because dad played footy, but he was an active kid who also loved basketball, as well as beach life.

"When I was little, I knew dad played footy but I didn't know how good he was at footy," he says.

"I just knew enough to know that he played, so I wanted to kick a ball and play with a ball and compete with my brother in the back yard.

"I was so fortunate to have so much time as a little kid being around the change rooms and kicking a footy with senior players, because it's not until you're older that you realise something like that just never happens for kids, to develop your love for the game."

He was making representative teams in primary school but wasn't as serious about the game for a period in his teens, before deciding to commit himself fully to football at 16 as he approached draft age.

"In my teens, I liked my basketball and did a few other things for a couple of years there as well, but I decided when I was about 16-17 that I really wanted to give the game a crack," he says.

"I was always super-competitive in everything I did as a kid and I wanted to be the best I could be, so once I committed to footy, I wanted to be really good."

It's now part of footy folklore that Ablett arrived at Geelong at a time when the club was recasting its future around youth and the litter of young Cats that walked through the door would emerge together to end a four-decade premiership drought.

The year 1999 brought Joel Corey, Paul Chapman, Cameron Ling and Corey Enright, with the 2001 draft snagging Jimmy Bartel, James Kelly, Steve Johnson and Ablett. Just the 23 premierships between that group by the time it was all said and done.

He made the team for the opening to the 2002 season, debuting in a heavy loss against Essendon at the MCG, but his initial steps at the highest level were just incremental, as the Cats would finish ninth and 12th in his first two years.

By 2004-05, when the club was pushing deep into finals, he was kicking 64 goals across those two years playing primarily as a small forward and the 2005 season was the first year he would place on the podium (third) in the Carji Greeves Medal at the club's best and fairest.

There were high hopes for 2006, especially when the then-pre-season competition was won at Football Park in SA with a last-quarter comeback against Adelaide. Instead, the Cats would miss the finals that year and coach Mark Thompson very nearly lost his position in the aftermath as the year was raked over.

In this same three-year period, from the same draft as Ablett, Chris Judd was producing an extraordinary start to his career out west, winning a Brownlow Medal, a Norm Smith Medal in a Grand Final loss in 2005 and then polling strongly again in another Norm Smith count in an Eagles premiership win in '06.

Every other draftee from Luke Hodge onwards, including Ablett, was being compared unfavourably against the West Coast wunderkind.

As part of the review of that disappointing 2006, in which Ablett had again finished third in the best and fairest, the club brought in Leading Teams to try and strengthen the capacity of the group.

Ablett was sat down by his teammates in the 2006-07 off-season and told he needed to do and give more.

Specifically, as remembered by incoming captain Tom Harley, Ablett was asked (told) to rise to the Judd level.

"This story has become quite famous over the years that Gary was told by the group he needed to train harder, with more intensity," Harley says.

"What was actually said to him was that we told him he could be our Chris Judd, and that we needed him to be our Chris Judd.

"If Gary could produce at that level of incredible output, we'd be a top-level team and all of us would enjoy success because we all firmly believed he was the one player we had with that ability to go to that level.

"To his eternal credit, in about the space of a week, his training and output went up to something we'd never seen before, and he was away from there and was unquestionably the best player in the game for about the next decade."

Ablett said the words were hard to hear, but the competitive animal in him was determined to show his teammates he would take the advice on board.

"When we introduced the peer-to-peer feedback, the feedback I got was that the group wanted me to train with real intensity," he says.

"That was hard to hear but I said you need me to walk through what this means and that was a real turning point for me."

In this period, the dominant memory of Ablett in the mind's eye would be of him hunched over the ball, taking it smoothly in one motion and then usually exploding with pace forward, or handing the ball perfectly off to a teammate if the pressure was coming to him.

He would spend hours watching videos of Judd, and the other greats of the time, researching everything possible about diet and recovery to build his body, as well as working relentlessly on his skills.

"I set myself little goals all the time at training or in the gym," he says.  

"If I wanted to be better at my kicking or be better at my placement at stoppages, or things like my craft with evading tackles or giving the ball off quickly, I'd watch hours of video to see what the best guys were doing and then I'd be really specific about practising that skill.

"I didn't want to train for the sake of it, but once I wanted to work on something, I'd make sure I'd practise it absolutely the right way until I was happy I had mastered it."

The 2007 year was an incredible breakthrough for the Cats – an end to a 44-year flag drought with a 119-point Grand Final win over Port Adelaide, nine players selected as All-Australians and Ablett claiming his maiden best and fairest, first players' award and first coaches' award. Bartel would get the Brownlow, though, after Ablett went into the count as a hot favourite.

From 354 possessions in 2006, he nearly doubled that output immediately and would top 600 touches for the next seven years on his way to eight consecutive All-Australian selections. In that golden period, there would be two Brownlow medals, three other podium finishes and some truly extraordinary games.

In six straight years, it was incredible to think he would gather 30+ possessions every single game, every single week, while kicking 20-40 goals per season.

Fifty-three touches in an outing against Collingwood, 49 in another outing against the Magpies and five other games with at least 45 touches in a time when the ball always seemed to be in his possession.

And, most stunningly of all, a move to the Gold Coast Suns from 2011 to become captain of the competition's newest team.

It was an incredible wrench to leave Geelong, but it was the best thing for his development, the best thing for his family and the best thing for a sport hoping to make an impression in a frontier state.

"That was the hardest decision I ever had to make, to leave the club I'd barracked for all my life," Ablett remembers of that time, in which virtually all supporters of the club gave their tacit blessing as thanks for what he'd already done for the team across two flags by then.

"I really wanted to help develop the young people at Gold Coast as their captain and obviously it was an incredible opportunity for me to set myself up for life after footy.

"It was a real growth period for me but I also realised how privileged I had been at Geelong with so many leaders around me separate to the captains I had at the Cats.

"I don't have any regrets I made the move, even though we didn't play finals while I was there.

"I still watch the Suns very closely and I hope they are able to win a flag pretty soon."

With little senior support around him in the midfield, his output was simply incredible with four more All-Australian selections at the Suns and his second Brownlow Medal.

The gradual build towards contending for the Suns hit a major roadblock when Ablett began to suffer with shoulder injuries and by the end of 2016, the club told their skipper they would have to go with more youth, and finals on the Coast may not be realistic for him during his time at the club.

The Suns held him to his 2017 contract, after an initial request to leave, but traded him back to Geelong after that season for him to chase one more elusive flag during his finish with three sunset years at the Cattery.

Despite coming close with one preliminary final appearance in 2019, there would be no fairytale finish in the COVID year of 2020 – a severe shoulder injury in the opening term of the Grand Final and a loss to a rampant Richmond in the only decider ever played at the Gabba.

As the little champ trudged into retirement, the jubilant Richmond players broke from their exultant flag celebrations to form an impromptu guard of honour, notable particularly for the fact the Tiger players either removed or hid their premiership medals while Ablett walked past.

The days spent training hard, trying to improve, and the fun of shooting the breeze with teammates in the dressing room were suddenly done after 19 seasons. He misses the banter much more than the wins and losses, but his new role as a husband to Jordan and father to Levi, Grace and Ezra is the one by which he now defines himself.

"When I look back on it all now, I'm really appreciative the Geelong footy club gave me a chance," is the Ablett overview of his time at the top in footy.

"All the opportunities and the experiences I had made me realise you have to embrace things in front of you.

"I wanted to play for a long time but I knew it wouldn't last forever and I was thankful for every game I got to play.

"There are times you miss just being at the club and hanging out with a group of guys, but nowadays I'm having a very different fun.

"Jordan and I have got three young children and I want to be the best husband and father I can be.

"My commitment I made to myself when I became a dad was that I'm going to be really present in the lives of my children and that's been my focus.

"They are very active growing children and it's also the best possible time in my life with Jordan, being parents for our children."

There's no doubt that one of the biggest jobs in the lead-up to this year's Hall of Fame induction was for that video editor at AFL.com.au who had the task of trying to only work with five or six minutes of highlights for the Ablett induction video, from a catalogue that stretches across several hours.

Cats fans can pick their personal favourites in seconds.

From two incredible goals in the same pocket at Geelong – one for the Cats and then a later one against the Cats in a Suns jumper that were both wildly applauded by the home fans – to getting on the end of the most-famous toe-poke in Grand Final history in 2009, and a 2007 preliminary final snap late in the game that put the club over the line against Collingwood and on the path to a flag a week later.

The late Dennis Cometti called that one perfectly, 'cometh the moment, cometh the man', as Ablett's goal sailed to the Punt Road end.

In his time at the Cattery, he had the great fortune to be part of a great club at which so much talent was gathered at once, with 20 different teammates winning 48 All-Australian selections at one time or another*.

One player stands apart in Joel Selwood from that group of Geelong players.

"I played with so many great players but Joel is the standout among my teammates," Ablett recalls.

"He was an incredible leader with genuine care for the people around him.

"He would go out of his way to make people feel welcome and has always had time for those around him, and he's an incredible player."

Of his opponents that he locked horns with in trying to win the ball, it was always Judd that he marked himself against, with another guy on the field who played as forward during Ablett's time who could do amazing things too.

"I always looked up to Chris Judd," Ablett says of his fellow dual Brownlow medallist.

"I watched so much tape of him to understand how he positioned himself at stoppages, how he used his body to create space and how he would just accelerate and go straight to goals and make himself so dangerous to opponents.

"He was the midfielder I always looked at to see what he was doing in his game.

"Buddy Franklin was a completely different player to me but he played at such a high level for such a long time.

"It's so hard to maintain high standards over a long period and he did incredible things on the field."

The Ablett family of Gary snr and Gary jnr now become part of an incredibly rare group within the Hall of Fame that includes just four father-son sets (McMurray, Bunton, Williams and Ablett) and one father-daughter pairing (Greg and Erin Phillips).

To think that a nervous teen once questioned if he could go OK in the national competition, there will not be a single member of the Hall of Fame who would not endorse his induction as one of the greatest to have played and one who fits the very definition of its charter: '…. to recognise and enshrine players who have made a most significant contribution to the game of Australian Football since its inception in 1858'.

Congratulations Gary Ablett jnr, member of the Australian Football Hall of Fame.

Gary Ablett jnr

• 357 games, 445 goals
• Geelong Cats (247 games, 321 goals - 2002-10, 2018-20) / Gold Coast Suns (110 games, 124 goals - 2011-17)
• 2009, 2013 Brownlow Medal
• 2007, 2009 Premierships
• 2007, 2009, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2017 Best and Fairest
• 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014 All Australian
• 2007, 2008, 2009, 2012, 2013 AFLPA MVP
• 2007, 2008, 2009 AFLCA Best Player
• 2011-16 Gold Coast Captain 

*Gary Ablett's fellow Geelong All Australians during his time:

Jim Bartel (two), Paul Chapman (two), Joel Corey (two), Patrick Dangerfield (five), Matthew Egan (one), Corey Enright (six), Cam Guthrie (one), Tom Harley (one), Tom Hawkins (three), Steve Johnson (three), James Kelly (one), Tim Kelly (one), Cameron Ling (one), Andrew Mackie (one), Darren Milburn (one), Cameron Mooney (one), Matthew Scarlett (six), Joel Selwood (six), Tom Stewart (two) and Harry Taylor (two).