Hands up who wants to play finals? Suns celebrate during the big win over Hawthorn last week. Photo: AFL MEDIA
So here we are again. It’s taken nearly a decade, but Saturday night is another pivotal moment for Gold Coast both as a team and an AFL club.
Last time? It was Round 16, 2014, and the Suns were playing Collingwood. Just over 24,000 people turned up and witnessed a classic, Gold Coast clinging on for a five-point win which put them a game clear inside the top eight.
Unfortunately, it was also the evening captain and talisman Gary Ablett suffered a season-ending shoulder injury. Ablett wouldn’t play again for the season, and the Suns would lose six of their last seven games to finish 12th.
Not only has Gold Coast never looked like threatening the upper reaches of the ladder since, there have been times the Suns looked like a poor excuse for an AFL club as the losses mounted and the stars like Ablett, Tom Lynch and Steven May scampered for the exit.
From that moment until the end of 2019, Stuart Dew’s second season as coach, Gold Coast won a grand total of 24 games from 117 played over five-and-a-third seasons, only just over 20 per cent.
But after much heartache, Saturday night’s game, in front of what is looming as a sell-out crowd, is another genuine opportunity for Gold Coast to stake its claim as a serious player when it comes to this year’s finals.
The Suns have won six of their past nine games and lost another by just five points to Melbourne. They did serve up an absolute stinker a couple of weeks ago on the MCG against Carlton, but were pretty ruthless in disposing of Hawthorn by 67 points at home last Sunday.
And while we’ve been teased before, there really is a bit of depth and substance about the Suns’ playing stocks now, perhaps demonstrated best not by who is playing well, but by who isn’t even there.
Touk Miller’s protracted absence from the Gold Coast line-up since seriously injuring his knee in Round 6 even last year probably would have spelt the end of the Suns as any sort of finals hope.
This year, however, the Suns have not only battled on without him, but won five out of eight games in his absence. That’s because the likes of Noah Anderson, Matt Rowell, Darcy Macpherson, Will Powell, Brayden Fiorini, Ben Ainsworth and the veteran David Swallow have all jumped up with some consistent form.
The midfield star is a big chance to return to the fray if not next week, the week after, following the return of another important mid, Lachie Weller, against the Hawks.
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The forward set-up is beginning to tick over nicely, with Ben King and Jack Lukosius both averaging around two-and-a-half goals per game over the last six rounds.
And there’s plenty of x-factor about this version of the Suns as well, the likes of Bailey Humphrey and Mac Andrew showing some genuinely exciting glimpses, as did Malcolm Rosas and Joel Jeffrey last year.
What better opportunity to prove this really does all add up to a credible finals combination than with a win over the top team on the ladder? And you do feel like the Suns are some sort of chance.
For all Collingwood’s success this year, the Pies might well be at their most vulnerable right now, still without Jordan De Goey and Steele Sidebottom, and having scraped over the line against Adelaide last week and done similarly in this clash at the same time last year against the Suns.
A Gold Coast victory would potentially put the Suns inside the top eight for the first time this late in a season since that 2014 game against Collingwood.
Swallow is the only Sun who played that evening who’ll also play on Saturday night. Indeed, Sam Day, Sean Lemmens and Alex Sexton are the only other Gold Coast players from that game still on the list. They’re sure to feel a little déjà vu on Saturday evening.
They’ll also know better than anyone that even a win doesn’t guarantee Gold Coast’s “arrival”. Indeed, there’s just as great a challenge next week on the road against Port Adelaide.
And the Suns demonstrated their capacity to shoot themselves in the foot only a couple of weeks ago, two credibility-boosting wins in Darwin over the Western Bulldogs and Adelaide followed by an insipid showing against the Blues.
Gold Coast has hardly been alone this season, though, in failing to come up after the bye, so perhaps that really was an anomaly, and this really is one occasion when our usually justified scepticism about the Suns needs to be put on hold.
There’s been false dawns before, and who knows if even finals would be enough to save coach Stuart Dew’s job at the end of this season? But whatever happens on Saturday night, even just talking about Gold Coast as a serious September proposition this deep into a season is in itself something.
This article first appeared at ESPN.
