Gold Coast chairman Tony Cochrane put it on the agenda earlier in the week saying his club needs experienced players to put around their young list.
With that in mind, Jordan Lewis has revealed a conversation he had regarding a move to the Suns in 2016.
Lewis would end up leaving the Hawks for Melbourne, but the four-time premiership player says Alastair Clarkson attempted to convince him to be part of the Jaeger O’Meara trade with the Suns.
“I had a brief conversation with Stuart Dew, but it was nothing formal,” Lewis told SEN Breakfast.
“I had a longer conversation with Alastair Clarkson about the potential to go up to the Gold Coast to play.
“It would’ve made the Jaeger O’Meara deal a lot easier.
“The conversation went for half an hour and I got one word in, which was ‘no’.
“I saw through that at the time,” Lewis added jokingly.
The O’Meara trade was a famously tough one, going down to the wire with neither team able to come to exact terms. It ended up being Carlton who stepped in and helped the Hawks put together the draft capital required to get it done.
Lewis added that he agrees with Cochrane, saying experienced players from successful sides is exactly what Gold Coast needs right now.
“Someone close to me suggested when I was going through this period about the potential to get not only me up there, and this wasn’t a football person, but if you could get three of us to go up there,” he said.
“Clearly I was able to leave through Hawthorn asking me to look for other options, Jarryd Roughead was coming towards the end of his contract and a good friend of Dewy and Hodge, you don’t know if the question had have been asked, Shaun Burgoyne was approached on multiple occasions about going to the Gold Coast and nearly committed.
“I think if you look at that side and Tony Cochrane said it the other night, they need experience. You can surround these kids with coaches which is great, but to have experienced players there with the players out on the ground in certain situations when emotions are high and you’re not necessarily thinking well.
“So to look back on that decision, and this isn’t to say I was unhappy with going to Melbourne I think it worked out great, but to look back and say if they had have pursued that a little bit more … it could’ve benefited a side like Gold Coast who hadn’t really had successful people up there from a playing point of view who had been involved in really good cultures.
“That might be what they need to do now. I’m not sure who the player would be, but they certainly need to strengthen their culture with players who have had successful experiences.”
The move would have mirrored Hodge’s move to Brisbane, with the former Hawthorn captain setting standards and helping change the club’s culture alongside coach Chris Fagan.
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