Geelong CEO Brian Cook says the decision to bring favourite son Gary Ablett back to the club after seven years on the Gold Coast was a unanimous call, and expects it to attract up to 5000 new members.
The 33-year-old re-joined the Cats, having played in their 2007 and 2009 premiership victories, in the dying stages of the NAB AFL Trade Period, following a swap of picks with the Suns.
He believes Ablett has come back to the club for the right reasons.
“It was (unanimous). I’m talking list management, football department, even our finance department were pretty happy, given the contract Gary came back on was much less than what he was on last year,” Cook told SEN’s Crunch Time.
“He’s come back for the right reasons and I think that’s also been really attractive for the community and family first people.
“It’s hard to place a figure on what it’s going to do to us financially and commercially. My real gun guess is probably an extra 5000 members.”
Cook said a key driver towards bringing Ablett back to the club, was his continued excellent performance, despite his age.
“Importantly I think it will be (worth) an extra two goals. The driver of Gary coming back is that he’s played very good football over the past five years, not his age,” he said.
While extremely confident the club would get the trade done, he admitted there were a few nervous moments as the period was heading towards the close, without a deal being finalised.
“There wasn’t (any doubt) until the last couple of hours. You’ve been negotiating for a year, it gets to the day and there’s only an hour and a half to go and you still haven’t done the deal,” Cook said.
“At the end of the day it was done. I probably didn’t need to be too anxious about it, but I did personally get a little bit nervous about it.”