Australian Football

At the end of the 1949 season, a Hawthorn official wrote to Port Adelaide secretary Bob McLean to advise him that a highly promising young Melbourne District player who had played a handful of reserves games for the Mayblooms late that season was on his way to Adelaide to live. Trusting his source, McLean proceeded to meet Abley when he arrived with his family at Adelaide station. Discovering that the player was planning to reside in Glenelg’s zone, he hastily made arrangements to find him suitable accommodation close to Port Adelaide’s home ground of Alberton Oval. Glenelg officials were, understandably, not happy, but there was nothing they could do, and in round seven 1950 John Abley donned the black and white Magpie jumper for the first time in what would develop into a highly momentous 212 game league career.

When the AFL announced its ‘Team of the Century’ in 1996, the selection which generated the greatest amount of controversy was that of Carlton’s Steve Silvagni for the full back position. A preferred choice, as far as the majority of the critics seemed to be concerned, would have been Jack Regan of Collingwood, famously dubbed ‘the prince of full backs’ during his career. Had the AFL been capable of a genuinely even-handed, holistic appraisal of the game’s history, however, it is hard to imagine them looking outside the borders of South Australia when choosing the greatest full back of all time. North Adelaide’s Ian McKay, the only full back consistently to keep John Coleman under wraps, and sufficiently versatile to make a telling contribution almost anywhere else on the ground, would be one formidable candidate, but without doubt the man laying the strongest all round claim of all would be Port Adelaide’s miserly, dogged, indefatigable triple All Australian John Abley.

It is a touch ironic therefore that Abley only ended up playing full back more or less by accident. After struggling to make an impression during a debut season that yielded just 8 senior appearances, he was asked to stand in for regular full back Reg Schumann, who had just retired, in an end of year challenge match in Broken Hill. Abley, who had never played the position before, took to it like the proverbial duck to water, and for the remainder of his Port Adelaide career he never played anywhere else.

A key member of Port Adelaide premiership teams in 1954-5-6-7-8-9, Abley was seldom the sort of player to feature prominently in best player lists, and indeed it is at least arguable that this was never really a primary motivating factor in his play. Instead, he was the sort of player whose principal aim was to ensure that his direct opponent did not make the best player lists. It was the same when he played interstate football, which he did on 23 occasions. South Australia’s 1956 and 1958 carnival teams were probably the weakest in the state’s history, with the inevitable result that John Abley, as full back, had rather a lot to do. Unlike most of his team mates, he rose to the occasion splendidly: in 1956 he was one of just four South Australians to earn All Australian selection, while two years later, after South Australia had put in its worst carnival performance ever, he was the only croweater to get the nod.

In Brisbane in 1961 South Australia performed somewhat better, but despite presumably having less to do John Abley, who was in his final season as a player, was as parsimonious as ever, with his third successive All Australian blazer establishing beyond any reasonable doubt his status as the finest custodian in the land.

For those not fortunate enough to have seem Abley in action, Jeff Pash’s concise and incisive précis effortlessly encapsulates his virtues as a player:

He has the habit of worry that makes for perfect concentration, sure-footedness (never a reckless throw for the ball), and the safest, most relaxed mark in the business.²

That ‘habit of worry’, inherited so conspicuously by Abley’s immediate successor at full back, Ron Elleway, and yet so lamentably and obviously absent from the outlook of a player like Steve Silvagni, was almost certainly the key to his greatness, as well as being one of the primary factors contributing to Port Adelaide’s unequalled period of achievement between 1954 and 1959.

Author - John Devaney