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The numbers aren’t great for the Gold Coast – with only nine games left this season, the winless Suns need a miracle in a third of those just to match last year’s return of three victories.
Their current percentage of 53.21 is actually worse than what they finished up with in their maiden campaign.
Guy McKenna might have signed a new contract, but there’s no escaping the fact that this has been a disastrous season in just about every respect.
The question is no longer ‘when will the Suns become a premiership force?’, but ‘how patient is the Gold Coast?’
Unfortunately the answer is not very. And that brings up another question, this one focused off-field – could this wave of AFL expansion have been more effective?
We all know the 411 on the Gold Coast – it’s ultra-transient; a new-money party town. The term ‘sporting graveyard’ gets thrown around a lot but it’s justified in this case.
The AFL recognised this very early in the piece and decided to counter-act, one assumes, by handing out the best and largest collection of teenagers to have ever played at the one club in the history of the game.
In reality, what we have is a bunch of kids who have all been assured they’re going to be superstars, all thrown to the lions at once – at a time when the best and the worst in the AFL have never been further apart.
And they’re being watched on by an impatient, unsympathetic, fickle city, with no attachment to the game – a city that has already seen one professional club die while the other two hopped on and off death row.
Many of the Suns’ prized youngsters have gone backwards. They’re playing a style of game that leaves them open and vulnerable in the hope that one day, once they reach the magical 60-70 game mark, they’ll just ‘get it’ and everything will click into place.
If there’s one thing I’ve learned from the past eight years of being a Port Adelaide fan – and from countless hours of Football Manager 2012 – it’s that no young player will ever reach his potential unless surrounded by older, better, and more experienced footballers who can help coach them to the top.
That, plus winning.
Fortunately there is Gary Ablett – but beyond him and Nathan Bock, who has been phenomenal when not injured or suspended, the Suns’ experienced brigade reads: Harbrow, Fraser, Rischitelli, Brennan, Warnock, Brown, McQualter, Krakouer*.
Hardly an inspiring list. So when you’ve got a town like this with a squad full of underachieving teenagers and some wise heads who can’t even cement their place in the club’s best 22, that’s a recipe for sporting disaster.
What makes the Suns invincible to that which killed the Chargers, the Seagulls, the Rollers, United, and now – maybe – the Blaze? We’re told it’s because of the AFL’s stacked war chest and its dogged determination to become the number one national code.
We’re told that the Suns will become a premiership force, just because. Maybe they will, but not as soon as anyone expected. Nobody knows, and nobody really saw a season this bleak coming – not after last year.
And yes, it’s still very early days. But I can’t accept that this could not have been done better, especially in an area where this game is foreign.
No franchise has ever suffered through such a harsh initiation to the league. And why should they? Maybe the Brisbane Bears went closest, but aren’t we supposed to be learning from our mistakes?
Already this year, the average crowd at Carrara after six games is 5000 less than last year’s overall figure. A slide was expected – the novelty factor has worn off, well and truly – but it’s being accelerated by the fact that most fans trudge to Metricon Stadium with not much to look forward to.
The only thing keeping chins up is the prospect of seeing the likes of David Swallow, Zac Smith and Harley Bennell blossom before their very eyes. And that’s not yet happening either – because they’re not getting enough protection to develop properly.
Injury has played its part, but this scenario was the making of the powers that be.
Instead of allowing the Gold Coast to hoard an obscene amount of high draft picks – many of whom run around in the seconds when they could be getting games at other clubs – the AFL should have demanded that they trade them away for older players.
Not only would that make the Suns instantly more competitive, it might even stem the inevitable bleeding of supporters – which will happen, no matter how much money is behind them.
Indeed it always comes down to dollars, and in the end, there is too much supporting the Suns for anything to go too wrong.
The hard slog will continue, but part of me thinks it didn’t have to be this way.
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