Suns look to north for better soft-cap fit

GOLD Coast CEO Andrew Travis says increasing the Suns’ presence in their north Queensland academy bases will be high on the agenda when the AFL gives them the power to spend the entire soft cap on the football department.

The Suns were $1.3 million under the $9.3 million football department soft cap this season but the AFL plans to give them the ability to spend 100 per cent of it along with the entire salary cap going forward.

Travis said the club had no plans to immediately make up the deficit but had already flagged to the AFL Commission their desire to invest more heavily in their academy region that spans from Rockhampton to Cape York.

“We want to invest more time and effort up in that part of Queensland and to do that you need to have resources behind you,” Travis said.

“We certainly flagged that as an area that would be one area we can improve our football program to the commission when we met.

“I think we got a pretty good hearing on that. They supported the view that we could be doing more up in north Queensland.”

Travis said the Suns would consider appointing coaches on the ground in the north, improving the facilities for their academy players based there and re-homing those who are shifted to the Gold Coast.

Suns academy manager Jason Torney and academy head coach Andrew Raines regularly travel between the Gold Coast and north Queensland to help develop players.

“It wouldn’t be full-time coaches but we might have part-time people on the ground up there as opposed to the guys we have got here on the Gold Coast,’’ Travis said.

“You’d support them with some more bodies up in that part of Queensland.

“That’s one part of it. But there is probably a whole range of areas that you could invest in (and) we need to work our way through all of those.’’