Gold Coast’s Free-Fall and a Coach Who’s Had Enough

Geelong put forty-five points on Gold Coast on the weekend, and if you were watching with fresh eyes you’d have been forgiven for thinking the Suns had never actually played a game of football before, let alone reached a preliminary final not all that long ago. Meanwhile their coach Damien Hardwick stood at the post-match microphone and said what a lot of people around the competition have been thinking — that a particular officiating rule is, in his words, ‘ridiculous’ — and you know what, it’s one of the rare occasions where I find myself nodding along with a bloke who once coached Richmond to three premierships, which is not something I say lightly as a Carlton man.

Another Week, Another Belting for the Suns

Let’s start with the football, because the Gold Coast Suns are in genuine trouble and the scoreboard doesn’t lie. This is a team that was supposed to be on the rise, a team built with draft concessions and relocation allowances and every structural advantage the AFL could dream up, and right now they are sliding backwards at a rate that should alarm everyone in Queensland and probably a few people at headquarters too. Back in my day, clubs were built through hard work and development and the kind of grinding, unglamorous labour that didn’t come with special draft picks — but that’s a grumble for another column.

The Cats were sharp, efficient and ruthless, as Geelong sides under Chris Scott tend to be when they smell weakness. Jeremy Cameron worked hard, the midfield did what Geelong midfields do — which is win the contest, win it again, and make you wonder why you even showed up — and by the time the final siren went the margin was emphatic. Forty-five points. That’s not a close game that got away. That’s a statement.

For the Suns, this is becoming a pattern that’s hard to ignore. The energy and intensity they showed earlier in the season has evaporated, and the body language from certain players in the back half of games has started to look worryingly flat. When a side stops competing hard in the fourth quarter you start asking questions about culture and belief, and those are difficult things to rebuild mid-season.

Hardwick Lets Fly — And He’s Not Entirely Wrong

Now, Damien Hardwick is not a man I’ve ever gone out of my way to agree with. He coached the club that beat Carlton in heartbreaking circumstances more times than I care to remember during the Richmond dynasty years, and I have a long memory. But when he stepped up after this loss and called out what he described as a ‘ridiculous’ rule around officiating — specifically the way certain calls are being made in the contest — I thought, well, there might be something to that.

Hardwick was frustrated, clearly, and coaches in post-match pressers have to be taken with some grain of salt because they’re protecting their players and deflecting heat, that’s the gig. But the substantive complaint — that the rules as currently interpreted have created confusion and inconsistency in how the contest is being officiated — is one that’s been simmering around the competition for a while now.

The AFL has been tinkering with the rules for so long, and so enthusiastically, that sometimes the game being played on the field bares only a passing resemblance to the one described in the official rule book. You add a tweak here, an interpretation there, a directive to umpires before the season starts, and before long even the coaches aren’t entirely sure what they’re supposed to be coaching their players to do. Back in my day — and yes, I know how that sounds — the rules were the rules and everyone understood them. Now we’ve got a living document that changes based on what the football operations department had for breakfast.

The Umpires Are in an Impossible Position

I want to be clear here: the umpires are not the villians in this story. I’ve spent years watching VFL and AFL football and the officiating is genuinely better now than it’s ever been — the athleticism required, the positioning, the split-second decision making at full speed. These are very good footballers who chose a different path, and they cop a staggering amount of abuse that nobody in their right mind would sign up for.

But when the rules themselves are unclear, or when the directives handed down from AFL House change the way existing rules are interpreted without actually changing the written rule, you create a situation where even experienced umpires are making inconsistant calls because the framework they’re working within is muddled. That’s not an umpiring problem. That’s a rulebook problem. That’s a head office problem. And Hardwick, whatever his motivations in the heat of a post-match conference, was pointing at the right target even if his language was colourful.

What’s Actually Going Wrong at Gold Coast

Strip away the coaching controversy and the officiating debate, though, and you’re left with a Gold Coast Suns team that needs to look hard at itself. The talent is there — it genuinely is. But talent without structure and without the grinding defensive intensity that wins games in the second half of the season tends to produce exactly the kind of results we’ve been seeing lately.

Hardwick was brought in as the man to deliver exactly that — a hardened, championship-winning mentality transplanted into a young and developing list. In his first season and change there were signs it was working. The defensive pressure lifted, the contest was more competitive, the attitude was sharper. But these things take time and the slide of recent weeks suggests the foundation isn’t as firm as it looked.

• The clearance numbers have been poor for several weeks running
• Inside 50 entries are down and the forward structure looks disjointed
• The back six is conceding too easily when the opposition gets on a run
• The fourth quarter has been a consistent problem — fitness or belief, take your pick

None of these are unfixable, but all of them need to be fixed fairly quickly if the Suns are going to salvage anything meaningful from 2025.

Geelong, On the Other Hand, Are Quietly Frightening

Let’s give the Cats their due, because this column isn’t just about kicking Gold Coast while they’re down. Geelong are building something that looks quietly ominous heading into the back half of the season. They don’t always win by big margins, they don’t always look spectacular, but they find a way to win and they’re harder to stop than their age profile suggests they should be.

The key metrics that historically predict September success — contested possession, clearance differential, defensive pressure rating — are all trending in Geelong’s favour. Chris Scott has them playing a particular brand of footy that’s boring to describe but very effective to execute, and if the younger cattle he’s now relying on continue to develop, the Cats could make a serious noise come finals time.

Carlton, my mob, would very much prefer they don’t. But I’ll tip my hat to them for the performance on the weekend.

The Rule Debate Needs a Proper Hearing

The broader point Hardwick raised deserves more than a dismissive response from AFL headquarters. Rule interpretation and the way directives are communicated to coaches and players needs to be more transparent than it currently is. Post-match pressers shouldn’t be where these conversations happen — they should be happening in properly structured forums where all clubs have input and clarity.

I’m old enough to remember when the VFL had rule changes that everyone understood and the game was played in a fairly consistent way from week to week. Now we’ve got situations where a coach is calling a rule ‘ridiculous’ on television after a 45-point loss and, honestly, you can see where he’s coming from. The AFL should be listening rather than defending.

Whether the Suns win their next five or lose them all, that’s a fair question worth asking.