Stuart Dew is set to be unveiled as Gold Coast’s new senior AFL coach.
The Suns have called a media conference at their headquarters at 11am Thursday.
Dew, Carlton assistant John Barker and newly-appointed Hawthorn assistant Scott Burns were the three final candidates for the role.
Dew has been an assistant coach at Sydney and was a premiership player at Port Adelaide and Hawthorn in his 206-game playing career.
He takes over one of the game’s toughest coaching assignments.
The Suns sacked their foundation coach Guy McKenna and his replacement Rodney Eade suffered the same fate this year.
The expansion club is yet to make the top eight after seven seasons and finished second-last this year.
By contrast, GWS joined the AFL a year after Gold Coast and have made the last two preliminary finals.
Assistant Dean Solomon was interim coach for the last three games of the season.
Dew joined Sydney’s football department after retiring as a player at the end of the 2009 season and rose to become a key lieutenant under coach John Longmire.
He was an assistant coach when the Swans won the 2012 premiership.
Dew, originally from South Australia, has been seen for several years as a senior coach in waiting.
Birdman
Guest
yep he and Mark Williams put on a clinic in tenacity to combine for one of those goals and then Dew went bang to hammer the lid shut on the Cats.
Kurt
Guest
Interesting appointment. Regardless of what he achieves at GC, my fondest memory of Stewie will always be those 10 crazy minutes in the 3rd quarter of the 2008 GF when he ripped the Cats apart.