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The sadness factory of the AFL has manufactured some more of it, with Gold Coast botching the exit of Stuart Dew.
Dew walks away with his tail between his legs, just as Rodney Eade and Guy McKenna did before him. McKenna and Dew each had a highest placed finish of 12th on the ladder, while Eade could only muster 15th.
McKenna, of course, was the stiffest of the lot, and it’s laughable to look back on his 2014 sacking now given the circumstances around it and what has happened to this wretched club since.
2014 was Gold Coast’s fourth season in the competition and after Round 16 they sat eighth on the ladder with a finals berth on the agenda. They had just defeated Collingwood in one of the club’s best wins but Gary Ablett, who had won the 2013 Brownlow, would have won 2014 by a street and was in the form of his career, went down with a shoulder injury.
Both club and player were never the same again.
Gary Ablett Junior in his Gold Coast days. (Photo by Jason O’Brien/AFL Media/Getty Images)
McKenna was sacked within three months, after the Suns slid to finish a mere two wins outside the eight. Ablett still played some fine football for the club, but injuries and waning enthusiasm for life on the Gold Coast saw him return to Geelong at the end of 2017.
Funnily enough, GWS also finished their fourth season two wins outside the eight, and Leon Cameron was to coach them for another seven years, including to a grand final and multiple preliminary finals.
Gold Coast went from an untried coach to a proven one in Rodney Eade, which was a disaster from the outset. Eade was 57 in his first season at the Suns, and whether he couldn’t connect with a young group or the game had passed him by, he was jettisoned with three games left in his third season.
Back to a younger coach the Suns went, with Dew yet to celebrate his 40th birthday but having won premierships as a player at Port Adelaide and Hawthorn, as well as being a highly rated assistant coach at Sydney under John Longmire.
As is often the way of a rebuilding club and particularly those that are in a perpetual rebuild, Dew went backwards to go forward, winning the wooden spoon in his second season before attempting a steady rise.
After finishes of 14th (five and a half wins in a shortened season) and 16th (seven wins) through the tumultuous COVID years of 2020-21, the wheel looked to have turned last season, with the Suns once again finishing two wins outside the eight. Their 10 wins equaled the highest amount in their history and Dew achieved a percentage of over 100 for the first time.
It was Gold Coast’s best season.
Stuart Dew. (Photo by Chris Hyde/Getty Images)
Bear in mind that in Stuart Dew’s time, Gold Coast have lost Tom Lynch, Steven May, Peter Wright, Adam Saad, and Izak Rankine. Jarrod Witts and Ben King missed entire seasons in 2020 and 2021 respectively, while Touk Miller is just back after missing three months of football.
Most people would have been expecting the Suns to finish somewhere around 9th-13th this year, which is about where they’ll land. They are nowhere near the complete package yet, but were the board expecting a top four finish?
In the lead-up to their bye this year Gold Coast played some of the best and most consistent footy in their history. They beat North Melbourne, Richmond, West Coast, Western Bulldogs and Adelaide, lost to Melbourne by five points and Brisbane at the Gabba.
In the last three weeks the Suns have beaten Hawthorn and lost to Collingwood and Port Adelaide, by far the best two teams in the competition.
However, there was a game in-between the two sets referenced above. What’s clear now is that Gold Coast’s humiliating loss to Carlton in Round 14 was the coach-killer it looked like at the time.
Specifically the second quarter, when the horribly out-of-form Blues (having lost six games in a row) kicked 9.3 to 0.3.
You have to think that’s when the behind-the-scenes murmurings started.
The first half against Collingwood two weeks later might have been what sealed Dew’s fate. A sold-out home game against the top side, fighting for a spot in the eight, and the Suns kick 1.4 to 11.6 before the main break.
The fact Damien Hardwick left Richmond a month before Gold Coast were inept against Carlton must also be a huge factor here. Three time premiership coaches don’t come on the market often, and it’s easy to see the Suns being seduced by the big name and glittering CV.
(Photo by Chris Hyde/Getty Images)
As we are seeing with Alastair Clarkson and North Melbourne though, it is not always smooth sailing. You can’t always bottle lightning again. Dennis Pagan and Mick Malthouse at Carlton, and Malcolm Blight at St Kilda, can attest to that.
Ultimately, all points of view are valid here. Dew has had almost six seasons to get Gold Coast into finals and hasn’t done it. Some will look at their ruthlessness as a sign of maturity.
On the other hand, from winning the wooden spoon four years ago, you’d say they are tracking okay and any history prior to 2019 shouldn’t be used against Dew.
What is beyond argument is how poorly the Suns have handled his sacking, the sign of a poor organisation. When Caroline Wilson can be so accurate in her reporting a week ago, it means the leaks from the club are profound.
Decisions had clearly been made but not communicated. Dew was left hung out to dry, fighting a public battle that he had already lost. And CEO Mark Evans emphatically lied on public record and now looks a fool.
Next will come posturing from the Suns about process, when Hardwick will be their first, last and only plan for the next senior coach.
The AFL will never go back on their calamitous decision to expand into the Gold Coast and Greater Western Sydney markets, but the Suns haven’t worked and will continue not to work.
It is probably too much to ask that they merge with a Victorian minnow like St Kilda or North Melbourne, which would be especially timely with the arrival of a Tasmanian team.