In their debut season, the Suns finished fourth in Conference A and became the first team from the club to qualify for finals.

Despite a fleeting exit via a 70-point thumping at the hands of Fremantle, the Suns surprised many and uncovered some genuine gems which will excite fans heading into 2021.

From their 2020 sliding doors moment to what the pass mark is in 2021, we sit down with coach David Lake and dissect the Suns’ inaugural campaign.

When you look back on the 2020 season, what do you initially feel about it?

I feel it was successful. If someone had of said to me at the start of it all, we’ll guarantee you’ll play finals, you’ll have a side that’s competitive in a national competition that’s been running for three years and the girls you drafted will be able to deliver you that result, I would have bought it. I would have said done deal. To achieve what we’ve achieved is an amazing outcome. My message was if I can get them to halfway, the rest is up to them. We got to halfway and we’re a little bit out of our depth in the final for whatever reasons. For me, we got to the highest point of success we could have honestly expected from ourselves.

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How do you use to measure the success of the season and was it a pass in your eyes?

It was probably taking the girls halfway. Yes we need to refine our program and we need to get better at how we deliver but I think the biggest thing is, we took some risks about how we go about it and how we teach and train. It’s a little bit different than everybody else and inherently, not everyone was comfortable immediately. If you measure what we got out of it, performance wise, we’ve achieved really well. I think there are a few conversations to have to help us get better but that relates to the people we now know that we’ve got an understanding of what program we need to deliver. Now we know what our room looks like, it’s about better setting up our room and that’s the exciting part. So yes, we ticked the box and had an acceptable level of achievement but there are good things to tick off and celebrate and also some work to do to go back and refine.

The general feeling among the AFLW community is that you overachieved this season and I know you disagree with that. What did you think the group was capable of at the start of the year?

Fi (Fiona McLarty) and I were put to the sword to find the talent and that talent achieved at the level it did. That can’t be taken away. I think we massively achieved on the list we put together and the word overachieved is horribly unfair because what is overachieving? It’s a term. We achieved, not overachieved. My pre-match before we went out in Perth (against Fremantle), my last three lines were, they don’t know who we are. Who is Hannah Dunn? Who is Lauren Ahrens? Who is Kate Surman? Who is Kate Pregelj? They don’t know, go out and introduce yourselves.

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It was your first year as an AFLW head coach. What was the biggest lesson you learned this season?

I’ve coached plenty but not at this level with the requirement of some of the things you have to do. I probably didn’t have the respect for the job Starc (Lions coach Crag Starcevich) does. As an assistant coach, you go home and lie in bed and don’t think about it and go to sleep. As a coach, it never leaves you. The game is progressing so fast and there’s so much to do and you’ve got so many balls up in the air. You rely so heavily on the people who support you. My ability to manage them is critical to the quality of the program you deliver. I was fortunate to have some really good people.

What did it mean to you, the club and the players to be the first team from the Suns to qualify for finals?

Overwhelming but that’s not why you do it. You do it to provide the best experience possible and that’s the outcome. I’m really pleased because Tony Cochrane, Mark Evans, Craig Cameron, not one of them ever stuck their nose in my business. It’s nice to be able to stand there and deliver on the risk they took. They trusted me and I’m pleased that we were able to deliver on the trust they gave. It is a really good feeling and I hope the connection we’ve been able to make with the Gold Coast community, moves us forward as a footy club. That’s more important. It was my first experience as a Gold Coaster and the connection to the community was really strong and I met some great people I’ll get to go on a journey with going forward.

The AFLW obviously made the difficult call to bypass the final two rounds of the season. Do you feel like it took any gloss off being parachuted into finals rather than getting the chance to qualify off your own back?

The decision was made based on the fact there were eight teams still able to qualify for finals. It wasn’t a decision based on, let’s feel sorry for the Gold Coast and put them in. I sincerely felt we had the measure of Adelaide and Melbourne anyway. My biggest concern was that it was going to be us or Brisbane. If Brisbane beat Richmond and lost to North Melbourne, we would sit on the same points if we could win our two and that would have been more disappointing as two Queensland sides. I don’t think it took any gloss of at all.

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If you had your time again against Fremantle, does anything change?

I don’t think so. The fact we had to go back to Perth twice, difficult. But Tiarna Ernst, she was so significant in the role she played for our team all year as a defensive winger. That last play she was involved in, she went the length of the ground. We had to get a plus one to their forward line. Their forward line is amazing and the firepower is incredible. Every team tried to get a number in there and Tiarna was our number. She marks at the top of the square and she missed the goal and goes off with concussion. Not only did she miss, which would have put us right back in the game but I lose her for the rest of the game. She was so well versed in the role and such a smart and experienced footballer. She’d been in such good form. That really hurt us. If I could have my time again and change one thing it would be for her not to go off with concussion. That was the most significant moment in the game for me.

It obviously wasn’t the way you wanted to finish your season but what do you think the girls gain from an experience like that and take into next season?

They’re a really good footy side who runs strong through the contest. When they jump for a mark, they put up their knee. When they tackle you, they complete and put you down. We thought we went hard at it and then we met Fremantle when we were tired. If we want to play at the level, we need to train harder to get to a level like that. How do we sit down, analyse and add to our program so we can get to that level because that was the benchmark. I think we learned a lot by having the experience.

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You weren’t afraid to shuffle the magnets this year. Will we see a more settled line up in 2021 or do you still want flexibility across the park?

I think we’ll be more settled because we explored a bit but I don’t think the exploring shouldn’t continue. Different attributes play different sides. Every side you play provides a different experience and my job, first and foremost, is to put the jigsaw puzzle of talent together to perform the best way we can against each opponent. That jigsaw changes weekly and for too long, we’ve not challenged the girls to try new things. That only adds to their overall package. I think you’ll see the magnets keep moving in the interest of the players.

Your game plan was entertaining to watch, consistently stood up in games and was quite different to anything we’ve seen in the AFLW before. How do you see it evolving over the next few years?

I don’t think it’s based on the game plan itself but rather the people who play it. We can keep evolving and tweaking it and that will be according to the development of individuals or new players to the side but I want to play entertaining footy. I want to create scores but you also have to be able to defend them out. It’s that dare to dream mentality of what we can be. The evolution of it will be getting better at the way we execute it. That’s in skill work and being clean and having a clearer understanding of how we move the ball in certain circumstances. We’ve only had seven cracks at it.

What is your major goal for this group in 2021?

In the first instance, it’s to develop our group. But we need to move beyond what we got to this year. That halfway mark, to finish fourth in your conference is not going to stand up. We need to add to the way we go about it to the point we have a top-three finish in ourselves. Our pass mark would be to finish third in our conference if they go with conferences again. That’s the minimum you accept and you also need to win those close games. If you can keep North Melbourne to 13 points, you can put them away. If you can get the Lions that close, you can put them away. We need to learn that and get that hard edge in how we finish off and we can’t accept any less. We can’t play the start-up card anymore. We need to be somebody. We’ve survived and now we’ve got to thrive.