Suns Find Another Gear While Roos Just Keep on Rolling
Nothing gets a young list fired up quite like a coach standing in front of them and telling them exactly what’s not good enough. Gold Coast copped that spray this week and then went out and beat Port Adelaide by three points in an absolute arm wrestle, which honestly is the most Suns thing that could’ve happened.
This is the bit of the season I live for as a fan of the game, not just my own club. You get these little pockets of the competition doing genuinely wild things and nobody outside the AFLW bubble even clocks it. So let’s talk about it properly.
The spray heard around the Gold Coast
Look, we don’t know word for word what was said in that Suns rooms, and we’re not going to pretend we do. But it’s pretty clear from how this team came out that the message landed. Sometimes a group just needs someone to say the standard isn’t good enough, full stop, and this young Suns list responded exactly how you want a young list to respond — not by sooking about it, but by going out and putting a genuinely gutsy performance together against a Port side that absolutely fancied themselves after their own good form.
Daisy D’Arcy was the headline act and deservedly so. The kid’s been building all season and this was the game where it all clicked at once — clean hands under real physical pressure, the composure to hit targets when the easy option was to just bomb it forward, and a couple of moments of pure class that had the commentary box audibly losing it. This is a genuine changer for that midfield group going forward, not just a one-off form spike.
Why the margin matters more than you’d think
Three points. Three goals worth of football either way and it comes down to a kick at the end. That’s the stuff that builds a list’s belief in itself, honestly. Young teams can go two ways after a spray like that — they either fold under the pressure of having to prove something, or they find that little bit extra because they’ve got something to prove. The Suns found the extra. No notes on that response, genuinely.
What I love about this Gold Coast group is they’re not relying on one or two star names carting the whole side. It’s proper depth footy — kids coming through the system who are being asked to step up early and are actually doing it. That’s the sign of a program that’s building something real, not just surviving season to season.
Meanwhile, the Roos just keep doing Roos things
Can we talk about North Melbourne for a sec, because I feel like their run doesn’t get talked about with the respect it deserves outside of their own fanbase. This club has built something in AFLW that a lot of AFL men’s programs would kill for — genuine, sustained, historic dominance. Week after week, season after season, they just keep winning footy games at a rate that should honestly be the biggest storyline in the comp every single round.
It’s not flashy necessarily, but it’s ruthlessly efficient. They control the contest, they win the clearance battle more often than not, and they’ve got that experienced core that just doesn’t panic when a game gets tight. That composure is the whole ball game in AFLW right now because so many contests are so tight on the scoreboard — the margins are genuinely tiny most weeks, which is legit great for the product, but it means the teams who can stay calm under that pressure are the ones banking the wins.
You could argue other clubs are catching up on list quality and structures, and fair enough, that’s happening. But until someone actually knocks the Roos off in a game that matters, the record stands and it deserves proper recognition.
What this means for the ladder picture
Gold Coast’s win is exactly the kind of result that can flip a season’s trajectory. Beating a fancied opponent by a kick after copping public criticism sends a message to the rest of the comp that this list isn’t just there to make up the numbers anymore. If they can back it up next week, that’s when you start believing it’s a real pattern and not just a one-off adrenaline performance off the back of a spray.
Port will be filthy with themselves, and rightly so. They’ll have had that one in the bag mentally at three-quarter time in a lot of ways, and letting a young Gold Coast side run over the top of them in the last term is the kind of loss that sticks with a group for a while if they don’t address it head on.
The Queensland footy piece I can’t not mention
As a Lions supporter I’m always banging on about growing the game up here, and moments like this genuinely matter for that. A Gold Coast side full of developing talent putting together performances like this, with a name like Daisy D’Arcy becoming one that young girls in the state start recognising and wanting to copy — that’s how you actually grow participation numbers in Queensland, not through some marketing campaign. It’s through kids seeing someone who looks like they could be their teamate doing something special on telly.
The Suns don’t have the history or the flags that some other AFLW programs can point to, but they’ve got a genuine identity forming, and performances like this weekend’s are the building blocks of that.
Where the round leaves us
So that’s your snapshot: a young Gold Coast list responding to tough love in the best possible way, and North Melbourne continuing to quietly assemble one of the most dominant runs the competition has seen. Different clubs, different stories, but both genuinely worth your attention this week.
If you’re not watching AFLW with the same energy you watch the men’s competition, rounds like this are exactly why you should be. The story lines are just as rich, the footy is just as gripping, and frankly the standard keeps climbing every single season. Get around it.
