Opinion
No doubt the jokes will come out about this being the shortest list in history.
But despite their chronic lack of success over their decade in the AFL, the Suns have been home to a number of quality footballers, including some who have not used the club to establish their reputations and then seek success at a more established club with a bigger pay packet.
Admittedly, the club has used only 121 players in their ten years of existence, and five of these were debutantes in the one game played in season 2020. Despite this, only one of the 22 players who took the field in Round 2, 2011, against Carlton at the Gabba on 2 April is not in the club’s top 100 all-time players.
Mark Lock played only the first game for the club and since then has been joined by 20 other players who have either slipped below the top 100 bar or have not yet climbed as high as it. Interestingly, those currently below the bar and no longer at the club include some familiar names: Jack Scrimshaw (now at Hawthorn), Nathan Ablett and Joel Tippett. Others, such as this year’s imports Branden Ellis (from Richmond), Hugh Greenwood (from Adelaide) and Zac Smith (from Geelong) would be expected to be automatic selections. As such, in a normal year – which this year is definitely not! – would climb the bar and raise it higher.
Regardless of the activity at the lower end of the top 100, there is no doubt that the top three in terms of games played for Gold Coast deserve their status as champions of the club. Over time a number of champions have come and gone from the side and because of their outstanding ability have been offered opportunities elsewhere.
The three top game players all started with the club in its first game and have remained loyal ever since. Jarrod Harbrow has now played 175 games for the club, joining them after four successful years at the Western Bulldogs, during which he played 70 games. A true Queenslander, he was born in Cairns and became the first player to play 100 games for the Suns in Round 7, 2016. Still only 31 years old, he could also be the first player to play 200 games for the club, although the lack of football so far this season will hamper his chances. Harbrow won the best and fairest at the Suns in 2018.
David Swallow, the younger brother of former North Melbourne captain Andrew Swallow, won Gold Coast’s best and fairest in 2014. Unlike Harbrow and the third top game player Michael Rischitelli, Swallow has played all his senior football at the Gold Coast Suns. At 27 years of age he currently sits only 36 games behind the four-year-older Jarrod Harbrow and would be expected to take over the mantle of the No. 1 game player at the club.
Michael Rischitelli’s football story is unusual in that the only best and fairest award he won before his retirement from AFL football at the end of 2019 was in his final year at his previous club, Brisbane, in 2010. Like Lions teammate Daniel Bradshaw, Rischitelli became disillusioned with the club when the pair were unsuccessfully offered up as a swap for Carlton forward Brendan Favola in 2009. As a result both players left the club, with Rischitelli opting to stay in Queensland and join the newly formed Gold Coast Suns.
The two leading game players behind Rischitelli have both left the club for greener pastures – those being Tom Lynch to Richmond and Steven May to Melbourne – but it is highly likely the only two other current-day players in the top ten at the club will both move ahead of Rischitelli when a full season of games is played.
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