The Gold Coast Suns are bad
(for an AFL team of skilled footballers). They have been last on my rankings since
Round 21 of last season, after their also relatively bad cross-state rivals the
Brisbane Lions improved.
The Suns started the 2018 season
off well. They beat North Melbourne, and then comfortably beat Carlton in
Victoria. Therefore, even though they were still ranked last after two rounds I
felt a bit sheepish about it, and conceded that they looked ‘to
have improved a fair bit in 2018’.
Nope, should have stuck to my
guns on that one … (and to some extent I did.)
From Round 3 onwards the Suns have been every bit the worst team in the league.
Their average net margin since then, adjusted for estimated home ground
advantage and opposition strength, has been an awful -40 points (see chart
below). Good teams like West Coast (R4), Melbourne (R8), and Geelong (R11) have
chewed them up, each of them winning by over 10 goals.
However, Gold Coast is still
unlikely to finish in last place in 2018. The Suns have three wins in 2018 –
their third being a close win against Brisbane – compared to Carlton and Brisbane with one
win, and St. Kilda with one win and a draw. With home matches to come against
Carlton, St. Kilda, and Brisbane, and three wins in the bank, ladder
simulations usually have them out of last place. So
the Suns should perhaps be thankful for their decent early-season form,
assuming that they actually don’t want to finish last to get the number one
draft pick (and the AFL does not give them a priority draft pick anyway).
The Suns are relatively bad at
scoring, and relatively bad at getting themselves in a position to score,
ranking down the bottom with Carlton in points and inside 50s per match. They
have few ‘top-tier’ players (and they may
lose one of them in forward Tom Lynch after this season) and,
to say a similar thing, they have far
too many players at the lower end for performance. Many
of their top draft picks that should be maturing now either haven’t worked out,
or – in the
cases of Josh Caddy and Dion Prestia – have been helping Richmond
to win the flag over the past year.
Though they may not finish
last, things can mostly only get better for the Suns from here.
P.S. Depending on how
things go I may not update the rankings for a few weeks. Fortunately, though
this wasn’t the plan, this coincides with the ‘bye’ weeks in the AFL, so
there’s less happening anyway. Just remember that if one team thumps another to
give them about half a dozen ranking points.
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