Gold Coast have a lot of potential for the 2015 after impressing in the early stages of 2014.
Yet can their young stars move up to take some of the pressure of Gary Ablett? And can they turn the Metricon Stadium into a fortress again?
Here are seven untold stories coming out of the Suns’ camp.
1. One-man band
After their promising season faded with the loss of Gary Ablett last year, the question has to be how much growth did Gold Coast get while Ablett missed the last part of the season.
Further, given how meekly the club performed in Ablett’s absence, does their skipper need to play 18 or more games for the Gold Coast to actually contend for finals?
The recovery to Ablett’s shoulder injury has been slow and while at this point there is no suggestion that Ablett will have a delayed start to the season, given the burden he carries, an underdone pre-season could hurt both Ablett and the club.
They claim they have grown, yet in their heart of hearts they likely don’t want to have to test that experience without number nine on the field.
2. One percenter men
Steven May and Rory Thompson both placed in the top 20 of the AFL last year in terms of one percenters. That tells both a story about this young duo and about how Gold Coast have played defence.
In terms of May and Thompson they have proven to be outstanding defensive prospects who are maturing into outstanding one-on-one defenders. In terms of the game style though, these statistics really highlight the pressure that was put on these young defenders.
This is not a team that used a heavy team defence and instead were putting the onus on each defender to win one-on-ones. With a new coach likely to bring in a different strategy, how that affects the games of May and Thompson will be well worth watching in the opening part of the season.
3. The games record holder
Heading into the fifth season of their existence, former Western Bulldogs player Jarrod Harbrow is the games played leader for the club. What is an intriguing sub plot of the Gold Coast season that really hasn’t been discussed is how Harbrow walked away from incoming coach Rodney Eade when both were at the Bulldogs together.
There are two ways to look at this Eade-Harbrow partnership. It was indeed Eade that really helped develop Harbrow into the player he became, but still Harbrow was very vocal about his pleasure to be at the Gold Coast when he first arrived, which was considered a thinly veiled shot at the Western Bulldogs coaches and administration.
4. The ruck decision
Gold Coast has a telling decision to make about their ruck division in 2015. While large parts of the team seem to fit in a premiership side, the ruck is one area that is very much up for grabs.
Zac Smith appeared to be the right fit but injuries have taken their toll and he was succeeded by Tom Nicholls. Nicholls himself was also injury plagued last year and Daniel Gorringe and Sam Day spent time in the ruck during that absence. The recruitment of Peter Wright only further clouds the ruck picture at the Gold Coast with realistically five ruck options to fit in one or two places.
The pedigree and potential of this group has never been questioned, but now with other areas of the team showing development the time has really come for one of this group to entrench themselves as the number one ruck. It does seem a wide open race.
5. Outside run
The inside ball-winning ability of Gold Coast has really never been questioned with players like Ablett, David Swallow, Dion Prestia and Jaeger O’Meara among the league’s best for winning the ball. The area of the midfield that may still be questionable is the options that they have for outside run.
With the best teams in the league seeming to have real injections of speed and class, Gold Coast appear to be all in on developing Jack Martin and Harley Bennell into that game-breaking outside duo. However, serious questions may be raised of this duo in 2015.
The query on Martin coming into the league was whether his body could hold up to the rigours of AFL football and though it is early those concerns have been proven in Martin’s first season. Bennell, meanwhile, had off-field queries and these could come to a head in 2015 if the off-season talk proves founded. Either way, in a league in which speed kills, Gold Coast could certainly do with some further injections of pace.
6. Home ground advantage
Before dropping their last two games of 2014, Gold Coast had developed a budding home ground advantage. Between Round 8 in 2013 and Round 20 in 2014 the Suns managed to win 12 of their 16 home games, including upset wins over North Melbourne, Collingwood (twice), Richmond and Geelong.
Given the growing advantage of playing at Metricon Stadium it could well be that the Suns’ season is defined by home games against finals contenders West Coast, Essendon, North Melbourne and Port Adelaide in the second half of the season. If they could win out that group of games or even record three wins against that group of clubs, probabilities of a maiden finals appearance seem to be on the rise.
7. Rocket approach
Despite all the hype that the appointment of Eade becoming coach brought, the sobering reality for those optimistic Gold Coast fans is that Eade has never coached a premiership side and is nearly two decades removed from his lone grand final appearance with a young upstart Sydney side.
Eade comes to the club well credentialled and highly regarded but whether the game has passed him by as a senior coach is one question that is not being asked, but needs to be answered. Some of the initial feedback coming from the young Gold Coast team has been of a coach that is not really in tune with the youth of the list.
While each coach is different and Eade has always been more of a process and strategy guy, being able to build strong bonds with these young players is crucial, having seen the demise of other senior coaches in the past 12 months. In an AFL world where player power is at its greatest, it could be that the reason that this supposed cushy position took time to fill is because of those player fears.
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