They backed him, then sacked him. But could Gold Coast Suns have kept faith in coach Stuart Dew, as Carlton did Michael Voss to reap the rewards?Coach sackings are rarely edifying affairs but every now and then – Collingwood and Nathan Buckley spring to mind – they’re handled with a modicum of class and decency. Yet they’re almost always acrimonious. Stuart Dew’s sacking felt particularly grubby. It was a dog’s breakfast, really. He was made to look like a mug. They backed him, then sacked him.The press release announcing his departure was farcical, even by footy departure standards. It made him sound like he’d just passed away. Footy coaches aren’t building orphanages or splitting atoms, but they’re entitled to some...
In blowing away the Gold Coast Suns, Port Adelaide showed a full range of gears being driven by a winning mix of quirky veterans and sundance kidsThere’s an almost avian quality to how Connor Rozee moves on the football field. He hovers and lurks. He swoops and steals. He glides in, and accelerates out of a contest. On Saturday night, he anticipated the spill from a throw in, met the ball at full cruising speed, took it in his left hand, switched to his right, consulted his protractor, caressed the ball on the lateral column of his preferred foot, and let it tumble, talk, and taunt its way past the scrambling Gold Coast defender. From gather to goal-line, it took...
Anderson’s clutch goal was the exclamation mark on a season in which Gold Coast have finally earned respectNoah Anderson barracked for Richmond as a kid. It was a strange choice, given that his dad was a two-time premiership player with Hawthorn. Noah was 11 when a rugby league player beat the Tigers with a kick after the siren. His dad Dean was on the Gold Coast this weekend. That day, he’d learnt that former teammate Paul Dear had died of pancreatic cancer. That night, he watched his son kick the most important goal in the history of the Gold Coast Suns.It shouldn’t have got to that point. The Suns were 40 points down and playing as badly as they have...