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You may have been excused for spitting out your teeth in your tea at the start of the year when Gold Coast Suns Chairman made claim to making the final eight in 2014 and a premiership by 2015.
I am all for self-promotion and rubber stamping the confidence of sponsors and supporters in the rugby league state, even if it means having to make Subway Super Size Statements to make everyone sleep a little better and pry open their salty Rip Curl wallet for a few extra sponsorship dollars. But please, spare me what’s left of my intelligence.
I hate being the only sane football person left living in Queensland, having migrated north over 20 years ago from the wheat fields of Victoria to the cane fields of Queensland. I grew up kicking clogs of dirt around a paddock through drought and fire, and never really appreciated that until I was faced with kicking cane toads as well in the Sunshine State.
Don’t get me wrong, I love Queensland and the people who live here. Over 300 Victorians migrate here to live every week from down south, bringing ten dollars and a clean shirt with them and never changing either. They migrate from the Garden State to the state of big things, big gardens, big dreams, big budgets, big pineapples and big statements.
I walk the sun-drenched sandy streets of the Gold Coast looking for any resemblance of a football clue. The city is drenched in yellow and blue stickers and streamers – their rugby league team (the Titans) are sitting very well in 2014.
The streets are starved of southern influence. It is almost impossible to find a red and yellow jumper with only a few closet fans stating it’s embarrassing to wear a Gold Coast Suns jumper because you will be bashed at school by your mates. Most of the expat Vics support the team they grew up with in Victoria.
The Suns have more problems than on-field performances, although that seems to be the only way to guarantee a football club’s survival in this enemy territory. The Suns now have a cultural problem relating to belief, and it is of their own doing.
Making statements about playing finals and winning premierships during a pre-season simply puts the kettle on to a slow boil. The rest of the season is then about setting the table and getting the tea bags ready. To jiggle or not? One lump or two?
The pressure will build inside the kettle each week and the whistle will get louder and louder, failure after failure. The temperature will rise and the water will eventually boil dry.
The Suns are sitting at five games played for three wins and two losses. They will beat Greater Western Sydney next week at home for two on the trot, and the belief will be positive after six rounds as the Suns will be sitting in the eight.
The Suns will then lose 10 games in a row and completely deflate any belief held by supporters, sponsors and, most importantly, the players. They will round out the year with seven wins and finish in the bottom four, while the kettle boils itself black on the stove, having sucked the life out of young men who gave it all.
If there was a book entitled How to create a losing culture? then there would be a photograph of the Suns Chairman John Witheriff on the cover. You have to excuse Witheriff because he is a lawyer and is not accustomed to three-dimensional thinking.
He made the statement that the Suns will deliver 20,000 members and a premiership by 2015. Even the Son of Gary is starting to shake his head when they win, unconvincingly against the Demons, following on from the flogging they received from Hawthorn.
It is quite simple – the team do not have system or solid structure. Players going round and round collecting statistics doesn’t win matches – that is easily undone by a poor choice, poor skill error or poor kicking for goal.
Unfortunately, these are the only sure things about the Suns at the moment. With the exception of a couple of players, they are poor decision makers and do not have the skill to get away with it. Forget about draft picks, forget about potential, because potential never won anything. That’s why it is called potential.
Watching the Suns against the Hawks reminded me of watching a two-year-old boy eat a giant bowl of spaghetti with his hands. Watching the Melbourne-Suns game this weekend reminded me of two little two-year-olds eating out of the same bowl wearing oven mitts.
If the Suns can turn the kettle off for a while and concentrate on the basics of footy – build a winning culture, forget about the scoreboard or the result and only look up when it’s done – they will surprise themselves and many others.
The problem at the moment is they believe something being brainwashed into their heads, building pressure by statements like “believe and you will achieve”.
What a load of rubbish.
There is a long history of great clubs and teams who have played this game before the Suns were even a twinkle in Andrew Demetriou’s eye – even the oldest clubs have only one premiership to their name. The backing of an organisation like the AFL does not guarantee success, draft picks do not guarantee success, pedigree does not either.
It all comes down to performance and how they play together, their understanding of each others strengths and weaknesses. The punters say that it is inevitable that the Suns or GWS will develop and win the flag – they have too many stars in the making – but after watching the decision making of those so called third-year players over the past few weeks, I think spaghetti westerns have more chance of a revival.
This is exactly what happened to the Brisbane Bears: believing beyond their expectations, cheque-book football, getting mixed up in the frustration and social life of losses and underperforming, reading the media, believing the black and white print and then running out to play in front of 1500 people at a home game, therefore creating a poor off-field and on-field culture. Winning was no longer inevitable, losing was.
The Gold Coast audience is very fickle and do not sit in the stands rain, hail and shine for the land of promise. They will support humble try-hards for a while, but they won’t support humble lawyers creating unrealistic pressure.
It is easy for the chairman, he can resign and commit to family time. The culture will live on… or not.
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