The AFL's kids are starting to play like men

The Gold Coast Suns and the GWS Giants have endured tough initiations into the AFL since entering the competition in 2011 and 2012. But finally both sides are starting to perform to AFL standard.

The Suns and Giants defeated the Brisbane Lions and Melbourne in their respective third round matches, improving their season records to 2-1 and raising hope to their fans that a breakthrough could come sooner rather than later.

The end of Round 3 marks the first time ever that both the Suns and Giants have finished a premiership round inside the top eight, and only the second time ever (the first coming in Round 1 this year) that both have won in the same round.

On the Gold Coast, the Suns entered the seventh QClash as favourites despite having lost their previous five encounters against the Brisbane Lions, and true to form, Guy McKenna’s men thrashed their older cousins by 53 points with (yes, you guessed it) Gary Ablett dominating yet again.

It was a good way for the club to bounce back from the eight-goal thrashing they copped from Fremantle in Perth last week, which in turn followed their only other win for the season thus far, an 18-point win over Richmond at home in Round 1.

Metricon Stadium is starting to turn into a fortress for opposition teams after the Suns lost their first seventeen matches at their new home from Round 10, 2011 to Round 18, 2012, they have now sung the team song out loud in ten of their last fifteen matches, including in both of their wins so far this season.

However, the Suns’ biggest home test yet will come this coming Saturday night, when they welcome the 2013 premiers Hawthorn to the ground in what will be only the Hawks’ second trip to Queensland since early 2008.

The Hawks have started their premiership defence (and life after Lance “Buddy” Franklin) with three wins to start the season, defeating the Brisbane Lions, Essendon and Fremantle by 48, 4 and 58 points respectively.

These results, plus an undefeated pre-season which saw them touted as the best performed team during the NAB Challege have vindicated their premiership favouritism this year as they look to become the first repeat premiers since the almighty Brisbane Lions side of 2001-3.

In recent times, most teams (except for Geelong and Richmond) have not looked forward to facing the Hawks at their peak, though if there is one team that can seriously challenge them this time around, it’s the Suns.

Guy McKenna’s men are yet to beat the Hawks in four meetings, though they did come close when they lost by only nine points to a Hawthorn side which left some of their top players behind in Melbourne having already secured a top-four berth.

But other than that, the Hawks have won the other three meetings rather easily, though all of them were played at either the MCG (the last two) or Aurora Stadium (their first meeting in Round 13, 2011).

Ignoring recent history, Saturday night’s showdown between the Suns and the defending premiers promises to be a beauty, as the Suns look to continue their recent good record at home against a side which don’t appear to be slowing down any time soon.

Gary Ablett Jr will again get the chance to shine on the big stage against a team of Hawthorn’s calibre, but interestingly he will be looking for his first win against them since 2010.

Now swinging our focus to the GWS Giants, who after a famous win over the Swans and a narrow seven-point loss to St Kilda last week, continued their own impressive start to the season (and the Leon Cameron era) with a gutsy win over Melbourne in the battle of last year’s bottom two sides.

Like the Suns did in their match against the Brisbane Lions, the Giants entered this match as favourites against a Melbourne side which are still struggling, and though it took them until the final quarter to get the job done, their favouritism also paid off.

History looked to repeat itself when the Dees, whose win against the Giants at the MCG early last year followed a heavy loss to West Coast at home, led briefly in the third quarter and closed to within a point early in the fourth.

But history repeated itself when the Giants, whose only win in 2013 was also against Melbourne at home late in the season, kicked away in the final quarter to record a 32-point victory in wet conditions.

This result has the Giants sitting sixth (and more significantly, higher than the Sydney Swans) on the premiership ladder, and, had they taken their chances against the Saints last week, could have been 3-0 by now.

For Melbourne, the loss makes them the first side to lose twice to each of the GWS Giants and the Gold Coast Suns, all in the space of twelve months.

Leon Cameron’s men will now embark on a five-week trip which sees them play two matches at their secondary base in Canberra, as well as in Adelaide, the Gold Coast and Perth, culminating in a Round 9 bye before they return home to face Richmond in Round 10.

It starts on Saturday with another winnable match against the Western Bulldogs in Canberra, though Brendan McCartney’s men do enter this match on the back of their first victory for the season, a narrow two-point win over finals contenders (or pretenders?) Richmond.

Following that is a trip to the newly-redeveloped Adelaide Oval to face the under-siege Crows, who could enter their Round 5 meeting against the Giants winless if they lose to St Kilda this coming weekend.

The Crows are coming off three heavy losses to start the season, the most recent of which was a 63-point thrashing at the hands of the Sydney Swans in front of over 47,000 fans at their new home base.

For the Giants, win those two and not only could they finish Round 5 with a 4-1 record, they could also dare to dream about an improbable finals appearance in 2014.

It’s still early days and we should not expect big things from this team yet, but the Giants have two victories to their name already this season, adding to the three victories the club have already enjoyed in their first two seasons.

Continuing the trend of new clubs starting to perform in year three, however, the Giants will be expected to start improving on-field results this year, with this season being their third in the AFL after entering the competition in 2012.

The Suns won eight matches in their own third season last year, though six of them were against sides which finished below them on the ladder (the Western Bulldogs, St Kilda and both Melbourne and GWS twice each).

Adelaide in their third season in 1993 reached the preliminary final before losing to Essendon; likewise, the Brisbane Lions also fell short of a grand final berth when it lost to North Melbourne in a preliminary final in their third season in 1999, and Port Adelaide also went down to the Roos in their first finals appearance that same year.

The big acid test for both clubs and just how far they have come since entering the AFL will come in Round 6 when these two teams go head-to-head for the only time this season on the Gold Coast in Round 6.

The two infant clubs have met four times with Gold Coast winning the last three – the Giants’ solitary win marked their first ever AFL victory way back in Round 7, 2012.

The main difference between the two sides has been Gary Ablett Jr, who polled the Brownlow Medal-winning three votes the last time these two sides met, an 83-point win for the Suns in the final round last year.

But this time, with the Giants keen to continue improving their on-field fortunes this year after seeing glimpses of what they can produce throughout most of 2013 despite winning only one match, we could be in for a different result this time.

As already mentioned, the Giants need to first navigate through matches against the Bulldogs and Crows while the Suns must tackle the reigning premiers Hawthorn at home and the Dees at the MCG before they come face-to-face in Round 6.

The Giants have a good chance to win both of those matches, while for the Suns, the match against Melbourne appears winnable though Paul Roos’ men will present a different threat to the one that were crushed by ten goals in the corresponding match last year.

And who knows, perhaps both the Suns and Giants could be in the eight when they do meet in Round 6.

Should their on-field improvement continue, this match will be compulsive viewing and could even take the focus off the previous day’s ANZAC Day triple-header (they meet on the Saturday after the public day, which this year falls on a Friday).

And after such a tough AFL initiation for both clubs, suddenly the future is starting to look bright after all.