Karmichael Hunt shook the foundations of the footy codes in 2009 when he accepted a deal he simply couldn’t afford to refuse.

Hunt was an NRL star preparing to move to rugby union when the newly formed Suns – bankrolled by the AFL – offered him an initial three-year, $3m deal to move to Australian football.

“It was the challenge of crossing codes to the AFL that got me over the line,” Hunt said. “It was something that hadn’t really been done before.”

Hunt’s defection was, as one newspaper said at the time, either “the greatest marketing coup in the history of the code wars” or “an act of desperation from a fledgling club”.

Was it good value for money?

In a promotional sense, the Suns’ first chief executive Travis Auld still insists that it was, given he was an instantly recognisable face on the Gold Coast and across southeast Queensland when Australian football needed every bit of ambassadorial assistance it could get.

“He did a lot of heavy lifting early on for the footy club and he should be proud of the contribution he made,” Auld said.

“I remember when we were trying to put ourselves on the map, particularly in Queensland, he was a guy that everyone recognised.”

Gold Coast’s general manager – commercial and consumer Andrew Thomas said Hunt was at the peak of his powers as a Rugby League and State of Origin star when he made the bombshell move to the Suns.

“I credit Karmichael a lot for being a massive conversation starter for the Gold Coast Football Club. We really struggled early to educate the public on who we were.

“Gold Coast was notorious for being known as a bit of a sporting graveyard and I know first hand from ringing local businesses: ‘I’m Andrew from the Gold Coast Football Club’ and it was like ‘oh the soccer, good luck’. So we really struggled.

“We had a corporate golf day and I had six people turn up and it was free. It was hard. And Karmichael was that first signing I think that people actually started to take notice, started to read about.”

Fast forward to 2025, and the quality of Gold Coast’s on-field performances, and the impact of superstars including Matt Rowell and Noah Anderson, have sold the fans and the market, but back then, in the club’s infancy, the new club needed different ways to get attention.

Was it a good footy decision?

No one ever thought Hunt was ever going to be Gary Ablett or even David Swallow, for that matter.

But his value was never going to be solely judged by his footy alone.

Hunt ended up playing 44 games across four AFL seasons, as well as an extra year in the VFL as he learned the game.

Only six of those 44 games resulted in wins, but while Hunt knows his body struggled to deal with the different demands of AFL football, he remains proud that he had a crack at it.

“It was everything I imagined … it was tough, it was gruelling, it was unrelenting on and off the field. But I am glad I put my body through it.”

HUNTING KARMICHAEL

Gold Coast knew it had to be inventive when it came to sourcing players for its first AFL season in 2011.

There would end up being superstar Gary Ablett, a few other battle-hardened players and a litter of kids who had talent but not yet the physique to play against seasoned footballers.

When former Swans player and then AFL Queensland talent manager Mark Browning two years earlier spoke to Gold Coast’s recruiting boss Scott Clayton and mentioned that Hunt – whom he had seen as a kid playing some school footy years earlier – was moving from rugby league to rugby union, he told him it might be worth a punt.

The Suns knew Hunt would be a promotion coup in a growing code war, but had to keep it a secret in order to make it happen.

So when Hunt’s manager David Riolo took a call from Clayton in early 2009 he thought it was a practical joke. It wasn’t.

The Suns wanted to fly Hunt down to Melbourne for a secret trial.

Hunt was put through his paces – to check his kicking drills – in a clandestine trial on some parkland in Parkville under the close watchful eye of Magpies great Nathan Buckley who was then working with the AIS-AFL Academy.

Others including AFL development manager (and now Giants CEO) David Matthews, AFL national talent manager Kevin Sheehan and AIS-AFL Academy high performance coach (and now Giants footy boss) Jason McCartney were also involved.

Hunt recalled this week: “I had the session with Bucks and it went pretty well … I had been around footy clubs since I left school so the idea of being able to see the Suns start from nothing was exciting.

“They had the backing of the AFL and the people who were working behind the scenes.”

That much was obvious when on his kicking trip south – one in which Buckley gave him the nod – Hunt and his partner were hosted by AFL chief executive Andrew Demetriou’s Toorak home.

The AFL’s big sell was on.

Inaugural Gold Coast coach Guy McKenna was initially sceptical about the recruitment, believing Hunt would have been better served at an established club where he would have more on-field experienced teammates to help with his transition.

“I thought he would have been better off up the road (with Brisbane),” McKenna said. “It might have been better for Karmichael if he had been with an experienced list instead of running around with high school (students).”

But he knew what Hunt’s presence would mean in terms of promoting the game up north.

The AFL charm offensive worked and Hunt agreed to sign on the dotted line which sparked a deeper divide between the footy codes.

In the first few days alone after his signing was announced, leading media buyer Harold Martin estimated that Gold Coast had already earned $500,000 worth of media coverage.

PAYDAY

Hunt played in Gold Coast’s VFL season in 2010, while also playing rugby union in France in the off-season.

He was 24 and one of 12 debutants when Gold Coast played its first AFL match against Carlton in 2011, losing by 119 points.

Hunt had five disposals in a modest performance as he battled hard to make an impression in a team essentially made up of kids.

He would play 16 games (for two wins) in his first season, with McKenna getting him to work on his skills closely with assistant coach Ken Hinkley, and his coach was impressed with his body transformation.

“He obviously had a great impact off the field, but I take my hat off to him for how hard he worked,” McKenna said this week.

“He was 110kg when he was playing rugby league and even bigger when he went to rugby union in the off season. Then we had him stripping back to 95kg.”

Auld added: “He made some of our younger players walk taller and the physicality of an NRL player helped some of those boys. They were just kids.”

Other than the first sugar hit of publicity with Hunt’s signing, the main on-field payday came in his 31st game when the ball landed in his hands as the siren sounded in the round 16, 2012 clash with Richmond in Cairns.

Hunt went back and coolly slotted through the matchwinning goal, delivering a crushing blow to the Tigers.

“It’s a great memory,” Hunt recalled. “Dimma (Damien Hardwick) was the coach of the Tigers. I don’t know what effect it had on their season. But I know we enjoyed the moment.”

Thirteen years on, McKenna still refers to Suns-Tigers games as ‘the Karmichael clash’ as a result.

“It was great for him to have that poise to go back and slot it,” McKenna said. “I was down on the bench that year and Kenny (Hinkley) was up in the box and he did most of the work with Karmichael so I was really pleased for both of them.”

SETTING SUN

Hunt’s body wasn’t built for the demands of AFL football and it ultimately let him down during the 2014 season when he was restricted to one game.

He retired at the end of that season, returning to rugby union the following year.

Hunt had some personal challenges during that time, later suggesting some of his issues started in his last year at the Suns.

He would not comment on those issues this week, but said he had learnt plenty of lessons during that time.

Still, he insisted he had no regrets about his move to AFL football.

“There were a few scars from the experience, but I loved the challenge,” he said.

“It wasn’t easy. My body broke down. Mentally, it was tough and we obviously went through some dramas off the field.

“The one thing is when you are not winning and you are losing, the microscope comes on a whole lot more.”

WILL HUNT BE WATCHING HISTORY?

The man who first put the Gold Coast Suns simultaneously on the front and back page – two years before he even played an AFL game – won’t be at the Gabba on Saturday night.

But the former code hopper will be watching from the comfort of his couch as the Suns take on the Lions in a history-making semi-final, cheering on the club he joined 16 years ago as part of a defection that rocked the Australian sporting landscape.

“I’ll be watching, for sure,” Hunt told this masthead this week.

“I watched the highlights from last week’s (elimination final win), and I saw Dave Swallow kick the winning point to put them through.

“There is no one more deserving than Dave to have that moment as he has been through all the highs and lows of the club.

“He had plenty of draftee mates who went on to bigger things at other clubs, but he stayed. And I know Dimma (Hardwick) will have them ready to go again against the Lions.”

THE ORIGINALS

Hunt wasn’t the only one of the original Suns watching on from afar as Gold Coast played in its first finals clash last week.

Auld, who is now chief executive of the Australian Grand Prix Corporation, was overseas and following it on his phone.

A devout Gold Coast fan, he watched as the Suns went out to a lead then couldn’t look when the Dockers started storming home.

“I was riding every contest … when Freo hit the front in the last quarter, I was that nervous that I had to turn my phone off,” he said.

“I looked at the (AFL) app a moment later and Mac Andrew had kicked a goal to level the scores. So I flicked it back on quickly and watched the last few minutes and got quite emotional when Dave (Swallow) kick what I thought was a goal but what turned out to be a point, which might have been better.”

McKenna was in Sydney watching the game on television, but he had been a special guest of the Suns earlier in the week as part of the Foundation to the Finals function.

“It was great, I caught up with Johnny Witheriff (the Suns inaugural chairman), and they flew Charlie Dixon up,” he said. “Then that night I caught up with some of my old staff who are still up there.”

McKenna and Auld, as well as up to a dozen former Suns original staffers, even got together at The Prince Hotel in St Kilda to watch the club’s final home and away game against Essendon which guaranteed Gold Coast its first September berth.

“You build some tight relationships when you are involved in something from the beginning and it was the first time we had got together as a group for a long time,” Auld said.

Hunt remains grateful for the opportunity the Suns and the AFL gave him all those years ago

“I don’t have any regrets, especially as it is your first time living life,” he said. “I had those five years, and played 40-odd games, and for someone who had had no history in the AFL, I really enjoyed it.”

Now he is just hoping his old teammate David Swallow has another September fairytale left in him.