Eade playing for keeps
SUNS coach Rodney Eade says his future at the Gold Coast will depend on the side’s success this year as he enters the third and final season of his contract with the club.
Eade was blunt in his assessment of how he has to go about winning a new contract with the Suns after two seasons blighted by injury and a lack of onfield success.
“That will be talked about during the season but it’s going to depend on results,” Eade said.
“I’m not thinking about it, I’m just doing my job and that will take care of itself at the appropriate time.
“I’m just worrying about the team and getting some results and to be able to win games, that’s my main focus.
“The boys are training really well so that has been my whole thought process.”
Gold Coast CEO Andrew Travis said the club had not set a benchmark in terms of the number of wins or a maiden finals appearance that Eade had to live up to in order to extend his time.
Instead Travis said the Suns needed to show improvement on the past two years and be consistently competitive.
“We haven’t set any targets,” Travis said.
“Effectively what we want to see is that we start playing consistent, competitive AFL
football and that turns into more wins than we have had over the last two years.”
Travis said he had spoken to Eade about the club’s expectations and would wait to see how the season unfolded before sitting down officially.
“We are really focused on trying to deliver some results and see us climbing up the ladder and anything else around that will take care of itself over time,” Travis said.
“He understands that, we understand that and we are all just committed to making sure we give ourselves the best possible chance of playing much better footy in 2017.”
Eade is yet to get the chance to coach his best 22 for a consistent period, with the team smashed by a horror injury toll over the past two seasons.
The Suns won four games in 2015 and six in 2016 while the likes of Gary Ablett, David Swallow and Dion Prestia were all sidelined for a long time.
He never even coached young gun Jaeger O’Meara, who was recovering from serious knee surgeries and then traded to Hawthorn at the end of last year.
Despite the circumstances, Travis said he was still able to measure Eade’s influence after overhauling the club’s highperformance team and culture.
“It’s not hard to gauge because there are so many different factors outside of results that you can assess a performance on,” Travis said.
“Not just on the coach but on all of our football department and we are really happy with the resetting of the staffing structures – particularly the high-performance, the culture of the club and the leadership of the club.
“We have seen those progress significantly over the last two years.’’