Suns bolster leadership

Coach challenges more players to step up

AFL GOLD Coast have recalled Gary Ablett and Matt Rosa to bolster their on-field leadership but say they need to find more players prepared to take some responsibility for the side’s fortunes.

The Suns v West Coast at Metricon Stadium on Saturday is a meeting of the two sides in the competition with the biggest gap between their best and worst football.

Both have problems travelling. When momentum swings against the Suns it is too often just a handful, namely David Swallow, Tom Lynch, Steven May and Jarrod Harbrow who are prepared to stand and fight.

While those players are naturally fierce competitors, coach Rodney Eade says he needs more people in his side who can give directions and make demands of teammates.

He said it was not a problem that his two captains Lynch and May play at either end of the ground, even though it is in the midfield where things break down first.

“Leadership to me is not about one or two players, it needs to be across the board,’’ he said. “We need to spread our base a bit wider.’’

The Suns ran up the white flag against Melbourne in Alice Springs as the Demons kicked 14 of the last 18 goals to turn a 30-point deficit into a 35 point win.

They are now 3-6 and another season of promise has almost been wasted. The poor performance heaped new pressure on under siege Eade.

But he said the side had shown in the win against Geelong, where they withstood a Cats’ fightback to record their best win of the season, that they knew how to fight.

His job as a coach was to educate the players to take more responsibility when momentum shifted in a game and address the situation rather than wait for the siren and the next set of instructions.

“We’re a young team, a young leadership group and we need to improve in those areas,” he said.

“We tend to wait to a break, where they need to be able to address that.

“As coaches we need to take some responsibility about how we put that message across.”

The Suns had planned to make a serious tilt at their first finals series this year but are now in survival mode.

Eade said all the coaching group could do was try to ensure the side was mentally switched on each week.

“Once this week finishes, we’ll worry about next week,” he said. “We’ve got to get that consistency. The results will look after themselves.”

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