IT’S not easy being the best footballer some people have ever seen — and being expected to win games off your own golden boot.

It wasn’t for Gary Ablett Sr.

The legendary Geelong superstar has revealed he sometimes felt let down by his teammates depending on him doing most of the heavy lifting, and that it must be similar now for his son Gary, who is easily the best player at the Gold Coast Suns and probably the best in the game.

Ablett Sr, 53, long retired after a spectacular career that yielded 248 games and 1030 goals, has spoken at length about his frustrations in a new book, Geelong — In Our Own Words, commissioned by Cats powerbroker Frank Costa.

It features first-person accounts of the contributions 32 prominent identities, including the Abletts and fellow footballers Sam Newman, Gareth Andrews, Cameron Ling and Matthew Scarlett and cricketers Paul Sheahan and Ian Redpath, have made to Victoria’s second biggest city.

Ablett’s lengthy and emotional dissertation is a coup because he rarely speaks in public.

He writes that from 1989, when Geelong narrowly lost one of the greatest Grand Finals ever to Hawthorn despite him kicking nine goals, the team “relied on too much from too few” for about six years.

“We had eight or 10 really top players, some mediocres and then we sort of dropped off, and that’s where we got exploited,” he says.

“I played in four Grand Finals that we lost ... I’ll be honest, it probably played a part in finishing my career. There was always that feeling of being relied upon so much in a game that I wondered why someone else couldn’t step up.

“I’m not saying they didn’t, but I often felt relied upon.

“One grand final day I asked Malcolm Blight (the coach), ‘Can we please not have the papers on the bus?’.

“West Coast would be boasting, ‘We have so and so and so and so’ and Geelong would reply, ‘But we have Superman’. So it put enormous pressure on me ... and I would be thinking, ‘Guys, please, can we spread this out a bit?’.”

Clubs and the media do not realise the pressure they put on individuals with extravagant headlines, Ablett says.

“Having that millstone thrown around your neck could stifle just running out and enjoying the game.”

Ablett says he enjoyed the atmosphere of Grand Finals but in 1995, when the Cats were being “flogged” by Carlton, he was disappointed by coach Gary Ayres’ insistence that it was up to him to change the game.

“I was 35 -years-old, going on 36. Ayresy came up to me at half-time and said, ‘Run through a few, take ’em out’,” he said.

“And I thought, ‘Easy, I’m 35 and a half years old, where are the young blokes? I’ve been doing it for years’.

“It disappointed me because there were plenty of other blokes with big muscles.”

Ablett had only 11 disposals, two marks and failed to kick a goal in the 1995 Grand Final, as the Blues prevailed by 10 goals.

“That was the worst one of the lot,” Ablett says. “I felt let down in the sense that a team shouldn’t rely so much on one player. Nor do you want to be relied upon.

“I guess it’s like young Gary now. When it says on the front page of the Herald Sun, ‘Ablett blitzes the Saints,’ you think that is not the right way of saying it.

“It should be, ‘The Suns blitz the Saints’. Singling him out too much alters perception. Even other players feel he’s getting all the credit, they’re thinking, ‘We’re in this too’.”

Ablett also reveals he was “knocked rotten” by his marriage break-up in 1989.

“I cried myself to sleep for a long time,” he says, and the whole season, culminating in his Grand Final heroics, was depressing and traumatic.

“I was driving trucks for Geelong president Ron Hovey. I went through the stage where I’d have to pull the truck over, get in the back and just cry for an hour or more, just praying for the pain to stop.

“There would be times when I’d be crying before the game and I’d have to hide it.

“It was a time of immense sadness but, at the same time, of having to persevere.”

Ablett, who also speaks at length about his Christianity, says it was only “by the grace of God that I got through”.

GEELONG — IN OUR OWN WORDS, published by Hardie-Grant in conjunction with Costa Property Group. RRP: $49.95

ron.reed@news.com.au

Twitter: @Reedrw