Australian Football League Grand final: Paul Daffeyreports on the build-up to tomorrow's final with Geelong looking to the son of a former star to bridge a 44-year gap with victory.

Geelong go into the Australian Football League's Grand Final against Port Adelaide tomorrow with the best wishes of the nation behind it. That's what happens when you haven't won a premiership for 44 years.

The Cats also win a lot of support because they're the only AFL club to be based in a provincial city. Melbourne, the capital of Victoria, has nine clubs in the AFL.

Geelong, which is 80 kilometres south of Melbourne, has one team and it will carry a little of the hearts of rural Australia when it takes on a tough, worldly opponent before 100,000 at the Melbourne Cricket Ground.

Geelong traditionally has been anything but worldly. The coach of the 1963 team that won the Cat's last premiership, Bob Davis, claims he was the last unthinking coach. Bobby (he's famous enough to be known simply by his first name) gave his players no instructions. He just selected a team and let the players play. Geelong has always had an uncomplicated charm.

The Geelong Football Club was formed just after Australian football's first club, the Melbourne Football Club, in 1858. Since its formation Geelong has played with flair. Melbourne clubs are known throughout the AFL for a certain hard-headedness, but the Cats have always encouraged shootouts.

In the Geelong way of thinking, it doesn't matter how many goals your opposition kicks as long as you kick more.

This ethos reached its zenith in the early 1990s under the coaching of Malcolm Blight, one of the game's mavericks. Blight's teams contained half a dozen of the game's best talents.

In a competition in which it's said that defence wins premierships, Geelong players were given the licence to attack. The Cats reached four Grand Finals between 1989 and 1995, only to lose them all.

The greatest talent at Geelong in this era was Gary Ablett. Bobby Davis says Ablett is the best player to have played for Geelong. Many judges claim he is the most talented player to have played the Australian game.

Ablett is 185 centimetres, which is not particularly tall, but he had a combination of speed and strength that enabled him to play anywhere and do anything. Tens of thousands went to Geelong games simply to watch him. It was a privilege to witness his freakish greatness. All who did so will tell their grandkids about it.

As much as Ablett could make a football talk, he's never been much good at talking himself. He rarely talked to team-mates because he didn't know their names. He once turned up late for a game because he was engrossed in a fishing video. Ablett had the attitude of a park footballer without quite the work ethic. He played completely on instinct and the fans loved him for it.

God, as he ridiculously became known because of the celestial nature of his performances, never coped with adulation. Fame sat uneasily with him and he became more reclusive with the years. But after retiring in 1997, Ablett proved incapable of surviving without the help of football club officials. As a 36-year-old, Ablett was unable to go to the bank by himself. Little wonder his life fell apart on the lee side of his retirement.

In 2000 Ablett was on a drink and drugs bender with a 20-year-old old Geelong fan who idolised him. While the former footballer had the constitution of a rhino, his accomplice did not. Alisha Horan died in a Melbourne hotel.

A coroner found the cause of death to be a combination of heroin, ecstasy and amphetamines.

Ablett did not face criminal charges but his part in the young woman's death sparked outrage. It also sparked pity. Football fans wondered about the darkness behind the greatness. Redemption, thankfully, was at hand.

Ablett's son Gary junior made his debut with Geelong as a 17-year-old in 2000, the year of his father's disgrace. Immediately, there was an aura about him. Young Gary played nothing like his father - he's too small to be an aerialist - but the crowd rose to its feet whenever he went near the ball.

His brilliant sallies towards goal exhilarated all who saw them, but football people in general were reluctant to place any pressure on him. Even the media made a special effort to shield young Gary from the expectations that had wrought so much havoc on his father.

Seven years on, Gary Ablett jnr is not mentioned as his father's son but simply as Gary Ablett. His on-field exploits have made him a household name in his own right. While Gary snr watches in proud silence from the stands, Gary jnr makes opposition players flounder. Early this week, Gary jnr went into the prestigious Brownlow Medal count for the best and fairest player in the competition as the clear favourite.

The fact Gary jnr lost the count to a team-mate, Jim Bartel, says a lot for the strength of the Geelong team. In this era of the national talent draft, the fact that both players grew up in the city of Geelong has revived memories of the middle decades of last century, when all clubs were built around players from their local districts. AFL clubs now draw players from all corners of the nation. Geelong's hometown touch adds yet another heart-warming element to its premiership drive.

Early this week, in a reaction to the hysteria that surrounded Geelong's appearances in Grand Finals in the Malcolm Blight era, the town of Geelong was noticeably quiet. Nobody was willing to make a fuss in case the expectations burdened the players.

Geelong's low-key approach to the Grand Final has been most un-Geelong-like. The masters of free-flowing football have taken a pragmatic approach. Some even wonder whether tomorrow's opponents, Port Adelaide, a club with a fearsome dockside heritage, might actually have the edge in flair.

Thankfully, there is one Geelong player with the traits of yore. Wayward half-forward Steve Johnson once broke his ankle after falling from a fence when he was trying to sneak from a pub that had been closed. Early this year he was banned from the club for six weeks after another drunken escapade landed him in the newspapers. The ban was imposed by his team-mates. The penalty hit Johnson hard. He came back a reformed character. In his first game back, the Cats won by a record margin. Johnson's form since then has been breathtaking. A winning performance in tomorrow's Grand Final would complete his redemption.

Much of Geelong's premiership tilt is about redemption. Wish them all the best.