Clive James once began a review of a Leonid Brezhnev biography by writing that it was so dull that “if it were read in the open air, birds would fall stunned from the sky.” It is difficult to know what James would make of the soporific Gold Coast Suns and their danger to the hinterland’s birdlife, but as a student of Dante he’d have a solid understanding of whatever circle of hell they find themselves in.
Earlier this year, Suns CEO Mark Evans said that if the AFL were to establish an expansion club into a foreign market you would have to establish a “15 to 20-year play”. His club is now in its ninth year in the AFL and having been pasted by over 90 points in consecutive weeks even a 30-year play seems sanguine – and that’s with three players taken inside the top 10 at the national draft last year. While it is in line with many preseason predictions, Gold Coast will now almost surely win the wooden spoon with its dozenth straight loss, a game plus a whack of percentage behind a Carlton that has been Teagued back into relevance.
Just days after Gold Coast chairman Tony Cochrane called for his club to receive a priority pick, his players made a case for them receiving six. Why not? The AFL has already thrown them close to $50m in the past two years. “Sunken costs” seems an apt economic term to use given the state of these Suns. After that, Gillon McLachlan should get in a light plane, fly across Bass Strait and rain down a great deal of horseshit on AFL Tasmania.
It would only be slightly more farcical than the performance at Metricon Stadium on Saturday night – one that drew plenty of laughs from the Adelaide coaches’ box, much to the annoyance of Dew.
“Look at the Crows coaches’ box in the last quarter there. So, that stings. It’s got to sting. That’s where we’re at. That’s what they think of us,” he said.
Someone also needs to keep him away from a computer, as even Wikipedia was in on the act, albeit temporarily. “The Gold Coast Suns, also known simply as Gold Coast are the worst team in the history of AFL. So much so that even Fitzroy laugh at them,” the team’s entry briefly read.
Unfortunately for the Suns, the only time they are given much thought now is if your team has them in the next six weeks and need to work themselves back into form, much the way Eddie Betts did on Saturday night. Losers. We love ‘em.
For the league’s other expansion team, GWS Giants, that opportunity may arrive too late, in Round 23.
On Sunday at the MCG as the clouds overhead conspired to shut out the sun, Richmond – who recalled spearhead Jack Riewoldt for his first game since round six – shut out a Giants team that continues to underwhelm after a fourth defeat in five games and an injury to Stephen Coniglio that, given the state of GWS’s fading premiership ambitions, is probably a bigger deal in the context of the restricted free agent’s contract negotiations.
Having slogged through winter with many of its stars in street clothes the Tigers are now eyeing a top-four berth, having leapt ahead of the Giants on the ladder. Although it’s becoming more and more difficult to see the Brisbane Lions surrendering their spot in the top-four after dismantling a powerless Port Adelaide who continue to be football’s From Dawn Til Dusk – an all guns blazing shoot ‘em up Western one moment and zombie-like the next.
This is to take nothing away from the Lions, whose four goals in the first eight minutes set-up another impressive win in what is becoming an impressive body of work, and everything that their Queensland neighbours are not – fun, exciting, watchable and winners. And nearly ten years after trying to boot the Fitzroy Lions to the kerb, Brisbane has also embraced a past that gives them a history that dates back to 1883, just eight years after the Gold Coast was first surveyed.
In surveying the current state of play it is hard to think that with Essendon’s last-gasp win over North Melbourne on Saturday night the eight is now not set. About the only team outside the eight you could make a case for is the Western Bulldogs who held off a persistent Melbourne at Marvel Stadium on Sunday afternoon, thanks largely to one of the best games of the year from Josh Dunkley whose 39 disposals and two goals make for better reading than the miserable percentage that effectively has the Bulldogs two games out from playing finals this year.
But insofar as miserable numbers go that title this year, it seems, belongs to the Suns.
