Can Gold Coast get their season back on track?
The Suns have had a tough start to 2023, dropping three of their first four games and sitting dangerously close to the bottom of the ladder in the early goings.
Coming off a club-best 10 wins last season, many were anticipating the Suns to build on this momentum and push for a finals berth, yet they couldn’t be further from that mark heading into Round 5.
With the season already threatening to spiral out of control for Gold Coast, SEN’s Tom Morris admits he doesn’t see how the Suns get back on track.
“The Gold Coast Suns are the AFL’s problem child and they have been for a decade,” he said on SEN’s Crunch Time.
“I’m not sure how you get out of it when you’ve got leaders like Touk Miller, young players like Noah Anderson, Ben King, who Dermott Brereton classified as cannon fodder for defenders.
“They seemingly have enough good young players to be competitive, but too often they’re not.”
Stuart Dew looked to have built up plenty of goodwill with the Gold Coast hierarchy last season, yet after this poor start, the question is certainly being raised about his future at the club.
“Stuart Dew is the coach that needs to lead this club out of this situation and so far, every single step forward they seem to take two steps back,” Morris said.
“Stuart Dew’s winning percentage across his journey, 18 per cent in his first year and 13 per cent his second year.
“It then jumped up to 32 per cent in his third year, 31 per cent, 45 per cent last year, so there has been a minimal improvement, but at what point do you start asking is he the right person to take this club forward?
“I’m not quite ready to say that he’s not the right person yet, but I’m also not ready to say that he unequivocally is the right person.”
For former Crow Josh Jenkins, Gold Coast’s issues stem from their reliance on a small group of core players.
“They rely on too few, having a look at the way they play and the guys who are around the footy,” he said.
“Anderson we love, (Matt) Rowell we love, (Touk) Miller we love, but those guys and Jarrod Witts… are around the footy and play about 90 per cent game time.
“That’s very difficult and flies in the face of the way almost every other midfield team uses their guys.
“They don’t have enough bodies who can go in there and play around the ball.”
Jenkins points to this reliance as the main reason why the Suns are never able to sustain success over a full season.
“Touk Miller, for as good as he is, and Noah Anderson and Rowell, they play a heavily contested style of football, they rely on winning clearances and contested possession, it just wears you down,” he said.
“That’s why we see them fade out of games and fade out of seasons, because they’re reliant on too few, they’ve got to find a way to get more guys around the footy.
“They need a few of those guys to step up and help their three or four guys around the footy because they just don’t have enough guys that they can depend on week in and week out.
“I think they’ve probably got five or six that they can depend on… they’ve got the four around the ball, they’ve got (Sam) Collins and (Charlie) Ballard down back.”
Gold Coast will take on an equally underwheling Fremantle outfit at Norwood Oval next Friday afternoon in the second match of the AFL's inaugral Gather Round.
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