Gold Coast coach Stuart Dew reviews the Suns 2019 AFL season

Another season has passed and the Gold Coast Suns haven’t climbed up the AFL ladder. Coach Stuart Dew reviews the 2019, what worked and what didn’t.

ANOTHER year and it has been more of the same from the Gold Coast Suns.

The AFL club finished 2019 with the wooden spoon for the second time, winning three games and losing 19, including 18 consecutive defeats.

Jack Martin and Callum Ah Chee are going but Gold Coast re-signed 14 players.

Coach Stuart Dew remains confident the Suns are on the right track in his second year in charge despite the internal confidence not manifesting in wins just yet.

When you look back on the 2019 season, what do you initially feel about it?

We started really well. We took some hits in the last five or six weeks but that was on the back of our backline being quite inexperienced.

They got some good exposure but we weren’t able to hold up against the quality sides. We were undersized in that department a little bit.

We tried to play a bit more aggressive in offence as well with a view to next year.

The finals were off the table when we got to the bye (Round 14) so we looked at how we wanted to play and what gains we could make with the view to next year.

The easy option would be to stack the backline.

How do you want to move the ball offensively in 2020?

The Essendon game (in Round 19) was the main glimpse of how we want to move the ball by having different speeds. At different times in the year we have gone way to quick when we haven’t had time to structure up.

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

It’s always a hard one. If our first seven or eight games were stretched across the season I think people would have a different view of it but externally people will remember the later part of the year.

If we take a more balanced view then, given the experience that went out the door at the end of last year, injuries we had and were a couple of kicks away from five or six wins. If we did that people would have said we overachieved. Something in between would have been nice.

Suns coach Stuart Dew talks to his team during the round 23 AFL match between the Gold Coast Suns and the Greater Western Sydney Giants at Metricon Stadium on August 24, 2019 in Gold Coast, Australia. (Photo by Jono Searle/AFL Photos/via Getty Images)

By your own measurements you don’t have any “A-grade” players on the list. How many of the group of 14 you re-signed this year do you believe can develop into that class?

We certainly want to build a flatter depth structure. A lot of decisions made last year were based around that so that if you do have injuries, how do you cover them?

We have a fair few players we think can get up into that B-plus or A-grade status.

Guys need exposure and this year guys like (Jack) Bowes, Ben Ainsworth, Brayden Fiorini and Darcy Macpherson, a lot of those players got a lot of footy into them.

They will only be better for it. Charlie Ballard basically played the whole year and Jack Lukosius was the same.

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Last season you put it the responsibility on the players to come back in shape for a pre-season of heavy running. What will be the focus this time?

We essentially want them walking back in the same condition as when they walk out of their exit interviews.

We want to make sure they have some rest but keep active and then ready to have another good pre-season.

We did have a heavy running focus but we also want to try and integrate more ball work, running type stuff as well. The results of our last quarters and way we ran out games this season, we were a better side than a year before.

It was your second year as an AFL head coach, so how did you improve?

We have probably involved our senior group of players a lot more than last year.

Last year with the senior group there were a lot of unknowns around them but certainly with (Jarrod) Witts and Dave (Swallow) as co-captains they have been outstanding.

I certainly think we are a lot more aligned as a playing group and coaching group.

That is on the back of the personalities we have got.

We had a big turnover of staff last year too with a new high performance manager, Alex (Rigby) has been fantastic. The main thing I have learnt is there is a coaching team, high performance team, medical team and how we improve isn’t necessarily about myself or Alex, it’s how we do it as a group and the synergy within that.

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Are all the footy department coaches staying for 2020?

We will sit down as a group and review ourselves. We won’t have any changes.

You will enter the third and final year of your contract with the Suns but CEO Mark Evans has already given permission to the board to start extension talks. That must be nice?

The support has always been there. I have always thought with contracts that they take care of themselves if you have the right intentions, doing your job with passion and trying to connect people.

I certainly want to be the leader of this footy club and the coaching group, that’s where my passion lies and I absolutely love it. I think it’s a fantastic footy club.

Things can change very quickly but how long will you need to make this club successful?

It changes from year-to-year. In the industry these days there is so much movement and it’s also so even.

There are certainly teams who wouldn’t have thought they would be in finals this year and a couple of teams who thought they would be a shoo-in and they are not so it’s hard to make a prediction.

We are certainly in a hurry. We want to make sure we are not the team that is just rebuilding for the future.

We want to get among it next year and make sure we make some strides forward.

We need to raise expectations on ourselves.

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What type of player are you after at the national draft?

Everyone is after speed and strength. Most teams would say speed is on their wishlist.

Our strategy last year was to get a couple of key position players and then this year was more of a midfielders draft so I think it will be more of a midfield-selection this draft.

Need to be across year-on-year. Last year we went and got a couple of keys which were Jack (Lukosius) and Ben (King) came on the back of (Tom) Lynch going and Izak (Rankine) came with them. We think there are some really good midfielders which is important for growing depth.

We will look for some more mature age recruits coming in and it might only be two or three. But we want to make sure they can help us and support the list we have already got but grow our depth.

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You had mass changes of staff and players last year – can we expect the same again?

Last year we had a reasonable amount of turnover. There will be minimal changes compared to last year.

Tom Nicholls heads a list of players who have been at the club for some time but are not in your best 22. Do they remain required players?

It comes to a point for those players where we are discussing whether or not they fit in our system but also they are thinking ‘do I seek another opportunity elsewhere?’. We understand that given they have played a bit of NEAFL this year and didn’t get their opportunities. Tom is in a specialist position and it’s a bit different for him. We have spoken to Tommy about that. You can have a really long career as a ruckman but timing is everything and where you are and who you are behind or in front can change things. Rucks can play until they are 32 or 34 if they want.

Considering your former captains have all left the club, you must be happy with David Swallow and Jarrod Witts committing long-term?

We are really proud to have those two as our captains.

We can’t underestimate what that does for the footy club to know they will be here for the next five years.

They are very unselfish clubmen and have led well.