Tom Lynch, right, kicked a goal with the last play of the game to earn a draw for Gold Coast Suns against the West Coast Eagles on the weekend.
Camera IconTom Lynch, right, kicked a goal with the last play of the game to earn a draw for Gold Coast Suns against the West Coast Eagles on the weekend. Credit: Supplied/Supplied

West Coast Eagles got ‘exactly what they expected’ in draw with Gold Coast

Josh KennedyEastern Reporter

Perfection is always what we strive for from game to game and then in a season more broadly.

It rarely happens, but that’s what you are looking for.

Ideally you don’t hit too many speed bumps in the season, but we did run over one last Saturday night on the Gold Coast.

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Obviously we were hoping to come away from the trip with four points, but had to settle for two, after Suns forward Tom Lynch kicked a goal on the last play of the game to lock the scores together.

Given the respective positions on the AFL ladder (we were second and they were 17th) most people would have expected us to win comfortably.

But we got exactly what we expected. They put good pressure around the contest and we struggled to get our game going.

That’s the thing about sport – it’s so unpredictable.

And the Suns are much better than their ladder position suggests.

For one reason or another, mainly injuries to key players, they haven’t won as many games as most people expected pre-season.

We were not quite as sharp as we have been, they played some quality football, closed the gap and a draw was the result.

We’ll dissect a number of areas in the game where we did fall short of the mark and then we will move forward.

The idea of the review is to be better in our next game and beyond, so we don’t dwell on what has already occurred.

We can’t change that, but we can look to tweaking a few things in the coming weeks – starting with Hawthorn at Domain Stadium on Saturday night.

That’s a great opportunity for us against a club that has been the benchmark of the competition for most of the last five or six years.

We can’t afford to be off our game, even by one percent against the Hawks, and it’s going to be a real challenge.

As a footballer in the AFL you want to measure yourself against the best and while the Hawks are not at the top of the table, most clubs regard them as the team to beat for this year’s premiership,

As we move into the run home, with five qualifying matches remaining, our aim is to finish as high as we can within the final eight to give us the best chance of having an impact. Competing against and winning games against the likes of Hawthorn and Fremantle would give us that opportunity.

We play them both in the next fortnight and that’s exciting.