Why Gold Coast's issues are psychological and not game plan related

The Gold Suns are starring down the barrel of yet another failed season with their finals hopes all-but squashed after losing to West Coast Eagles on Friday night.

If they are to miss finals this year, it would be another dreadful season for the propped up club that has had one of most favourable draws of any club this year.

Damien Hardwick’s Suns have played Richmond, West Coast Eagles and North Melbourne twice this season with a plethora of first round draft picks.

With Friday night’s loss at Optus Stadium their 17th straight away from home, Nick Dal Santo has put the playing group in the gun as their wins at home show that its not a game plan problem but rather a mental one.

“The evidence before us that it has to be psychological,” Dal Santo told SEN’s Crunch Time.

“Damien Hardwick hasn’t set up a game plan that only works at one ground in Australia, it doesn’t make any sense which is why my frustration needs to be put onto the playing group.

“The responsibility of the coach is to create an environment and a game plan that can be applied to any ground but preferably the MCG on the last weekend of September and that’s what Hardwick spoke about in that post-game press conference last night that we aren’t up to the level of playing a September brand of football and Hardwick has seen that more than anybody has in the last few years.

“He can picture what he needs to see and last night he spoke about fumbles, critical moments and that they got outhustled and all of that is either a fundamental of the game or it’s the ability to play at this level which they’re not getting down consistently.

“I didn’t have them in the top eight at the start of the year but I think we all got a little bit excited about is this their first opportunity as they’ve got the most successful coach over the last ten years.

“I think the expectation needs to taper a little bit within because I don’t think that was fully in your heart of heart realistic given there’s still eight teams better than them at the start of this year and where we sit now.

“It hasn’t been a diabolical year but to have this conversation in 12 months time they need to take all the learnings out of this year and all the mistakes that they’ve made in this game to then be able to apply it more consistently.”

The Suns have never had a year where they’ve won more games than they’ve lost and they head to Marvel Stadium in Round 22 against Essendon.