Damien Hardwick says tough calls loom for Gold Coast after loss to West Coast ends AFL finals hopes
A frank Damien Hardwick has conceded “we’ve failed” after watching his Gold Coast side’s hopes of a maiden finals berth evaporate in a season-defining loss to West Coast.
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Gold Coast coach Damien Hardwick said his team needs to learn to play a September brand of football now, not once they finally win through to their first finals series.
The Suns were officially dumped out of the race for the top eight by West Coast in Perth on Friday night.
The Eagles fought back from 23 points down in the third quarter, kicking nine of the next 14 goals, to win by 10 points.
Even if the Suns won their final three games, against Essendon, Melbourne and Richmond, they would likely fall at least one win short of a spot in the finals.
Hardwick said a lot of work was still needed to get the Suns to the standard needed.
“Well, (the loss) can be shattering, or the next three weeks could be defining for what it looks like moving forward,” he said.
“This is an all-too familiar tale for this football club, to our football club, and we have got to change it.
“At the end of the day our playing group, our coaches, our organisation has to stand up and say, ‘listen, let’s get to work’.
“We’ve never had a winning season — I think our max wins is 10.”
Hardwick said “it’s not as if they’re not trying” and conceded he felt for his players and supporters as another year without finals beckoned.
“We were disappointed to lose. The fact of that matter is you got to play the game a certain way,” Hardwick said.
“You’ve got to play a September brand of footy and we didn’t tonight.
“Our contest work … in fairness, the last couple of weeks … it hasn’t been to the level that we’d like.
“We’ve got to sit there and make decisions on players. Our job as coaches is to help them and make them better, or work on the development phase and that part of the game.
“We’ve also got to be better in critical moments and play moments better and that’s the disappointing thing from our point of view.
“When we have a chance to be stronger over the ball and get the ball going forward, we just didn’t get it done.”
The Suns are stuck on nine wins, with only three rounds remaining.
One win, against either the Bombers, Demons or Tigers, will get allow them to equal their season-best 10 wins.
They’ve achieved that twice, in 2014 when Guy McKenna took them to 12th in his final season, and last season, when Stuart Dew also got them to 12th.
Hardwick said they need to use the final three weeks to achieve something.
“The fact of the matter is they’re not getting it done,” he said.
“Sometimes there’s one step back to go two steps forward.
“So we’re gonna make some tough calls about what that September brand looks like.”
Hardwick conceded he had “failed” to get his players “up to speed” in his first year at the helm.
“We’ve got to make sure we get better,” he said.
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