Gold Coast coach Damien Hardwick said his team needs to learn to play a September brand of football now, not once they finally win through to their first finals series.
The Suns were officially dumped out of the race for the top eight by West Coast in Perth on Friday night.
The Eagles fought back from 23 points down in the third quarter, kicking nine of the next 14 goals, to win by 10 points.
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Even if the Suns won their final three games, against Essendon, Melbourne and Richmond, they would likely fall at least one win short of a spot in the finals.
Hardwick said a lot of work was still needed to get the Suns to the standard needed.
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“Well, (the loss) can be shattering, or the next three weeks could be defining for what it looks like moving forward,” he said.
“We were disappointed to lose. The fact of that matter is you got to play the game a certain way.
“You’ve got to play a September brand of footy and we didn’t tonight.
“Our contest work… in fairness, the last couple of weeks… it hasn’t been to the level that we’d like.
“We’ve also got to be better in critical moments and play moments better and that’s the disappointing thing from our point of view.
“When we have a chance to be stronger over the ball and get the ball going forward, we just didn’t get it done.”
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The Suns are stuck on nine wins, with only three rounds remaining. One win, against wither the Bombers, Demons or Tigers, will get them to their equal best 10 wins.
They’ve achieved that twice, in 2014 when Guy McKenna took them to 12th in his final season, and last season, when Stuart Dew also got them to 12th.
Hardwick said they need to use the final three weeks to achieve something.
“We’ve got three weeks to turn something around,” he said.
“We’ve never had a winning season. You know, I think our max wins 10, so let’s work towards something.
“We want to make sure we sit there and finish off the way we should finish the season off.
“So we’re gonna make some tough calls about what that September brand looks like.”
Source Agencies
