There has been a lot said and written already about Gold Coast’s one-point win over Adelaide – most of it centred on the controversial finish that left the Crows adamant they’d been robbed.
It’s time to give this game, quite clearly the best of the season and one outstanding enough to think it’ll be tough to top for the next six months, the respect it deserves.
Even before the drama of the final minutes, this was an instant classic between two sides on the rise who finally answered the question of whether they’d be capable of the same brilliance they’d shown to start the year against a quality opponent.
Momentum swings were frequent – just when the Suns looked like they’d finally broken away, back would come the Crows with slashing slingshot footy, damaging kicking and the brilliance of Riley Thilthorpe and Taylor Walker in attack, to send this game back to the knife’s edge.
There were individual heroics – Joel Jeffrey’s goal-saving smother on Taylor Walker’s snap! – galore, ferocious tackling, a tactical contrast of styles, and outstanding performances from key recruits, be it James Peatling’s brutal attack on ball and man all afternoon or Daniel Rioli’s pace, poise and infinite calm in a final quarter where he refused to let the damn wall break for the Suns.
Both sides’ defences came up against an in-form attack – the Crows with their trio of gun talls, the Suns a more even spread of contributors up forward and through the midfield – and tried desperately to hold them at bay, the result a partial success on both sides given neither, for the first time this season, reached triple figures.
Stuff the controversy. To focus only on the ending disrespects an incredible contest.
The Crows’ best avenue to goal throughout the day was from their defensive half – remarkably, nine of their 14 goals started from the wrong side of the centre circle, no mean feat against a Suns backline as well-drilled as any in the league.
Heading into the game, the Suns were top four, admittedly from a tiny sample size against two teams in West Coast and Melbourne that do it particularly poorly, in conceding scores from defensive half.
But when the Crows got a run on, be it via the lethal left foot of Mitchell Hinge, the spread and raking kick of Isaac Cumming, or the run and carry of Wayne Milera, the results were frequently damaging.
The key element for the Crows that has transformed them in 2025 from middle-of-the-road to a force to be reckoned with is their delivery inside 50.
In 2024, they averaged a mark every 4.45 entries, ranked smack bang in the middle of the table: considering they were bottom-six for inside 50s as well, no wonder they struggled to score far more than a team with their weapons should.
That figure has dropped to a tick over 4, with 13 from 53 inside 50s against a previously miserly suns backline that gave up 17 in total across their first two games, with Thilthorpe (five), Walker and Fogarty (three each) taking the lion’s share.
Part of it is kicking – I’m not sure I’ve seen a better pass inside 50 than this one from Ben Keays to Thilthorpe right on the quarter-time siren.
The Suns are well set in defence for the high bomb, with Sam Collins loose and Mac Andrew guarding Thilthorpe; the Keays pass, though, doesn’t just hit him lace out on the lead directly in front, but right in the middle of no less than three Suns who still couldn’t do anything about it.
What’s just as impressive is how well the Crows’ trio of talls spread opposition defences: they know each of them is a handful one-on-one, and it’s incredibly rare to see any two of them fly for the same ball.
Case in point, this Walker third-quarter goal: he, or Fogarty, or Thilthorpe, are consistently happy to lead up to half-forward and up to the wing as outlet options for a kick, dragging a key back with them and further isolating the others deep.
Walker does exactly this with Andrew, and so swift is the Crows’ play that Thilthorpe has left Collins guarding grass in the forward pocket and sprinted straight for the open goal. Tex’s kick is pinpoint enough that it actually beats him home.
The Crows are in the Hawthorn mould: take the game on, run quickly, get the ball in the hands of the good users, and profit.
Izak Rankine has been moved up onto the ball to add some creativity and spark to a midfield that once smacked of sameness; both he and Jordan Dawson now have the licence to push forward from stoppages and create mismatches in attack. One of them very nearly let Rankine take the mark inside 50 that could have won it at the death.
The Crows are suddenly a high-disposal team capable of retaining the ball and still doing damage; blessed with the confidence that they have players that can use it and use it well, they are fifth in the league for average marks per game, up from 14th last season.
Regardless of Saturday’s result, one that came without the rub of the green from the umpires plus the absence of key cogs Josh Rachele and Nick Murray, and on the road against a quality opponent, they can rest assured that the doubts of the football world over whether they truly are a team on the rise have been put to bed.
For the Suns to beat them is a significant achievement, then; even Damien Hardwick admitted post-match that this was a game that for much of their history, Gold Coast simply wouldn’t have won.
Expectation has frequently brought with it the dashing of Suns dreams in their painful history. This feels different.
Will Graham celebrates a Gold Coast goal. (Photo by Matt Roberts/AFL Photos/via Getty Images)
The Suns are an irresistible pressure machine without the ball, with a manic intensity to rival the Richmond triple-flag juggernaut that Hardwick presided over.
They lock the ball in their attack for extended periods – by half time, they had a whopping 22 forward half intercepts, more than double the Crows’ tally, while the match ended with a 12-6 superiority for tackles inside 50.
Ben Long is the underrated architect of much of this; having struggled to find a niche since joining the Suns from St Kilda, his ferocious attack on the man makes him exactly the sort of player Hardwick would love – another Liam Baker, just with even less polish.
Hardwick hasn’t been afraid to unleash youth in attack, either: Ben King is the fulcrum of the forward line and in his prime, but with the spearhead quieter than usual, finishing with just two goals, there were others to share the load.
Jed Walter, for instance; the Suns’ Academy gun picked a great day to break out, kicking three goals for the afternoon to pass his previous career best.
Another Academy budding star in Ethan Read doesn’t just give Jarrod Witts a chop out in the ruck; up forward, he throws his weight around, equalling Long with three tackles inside attacking 50.
But it’s the midfield where the Suns are at their best: they’re not just the league leaders in scores from stoppages, but they’re numero uno in conceding from stoppage too.
Under Stuart Dew, the Suns were predictable in how their midfield set up: it was Touk Miller, Matt Rowell and Noah Anderson at centre bounces, with David Swallow the alternate if they needed a tagger or one was injured. In 2023, those four were the only non-Suns rucks to attend more than 30 per cent of centre bounces in their games.
Hardwick, though, has shown a far greater willingness to harness his side’s wealth of talent around the ball, even going so far as to change Miller’s role from inside ball-winner to roaming half-forward who pushes up to stoppages and outworks his opponents going back the other way.
It’s still Anderson and Rowell in there nearly all of the time, but Sam Flanders, a defensive sweeper who racks up the ball in transition from defence to atack, and Bailey Humphrey, a ball of energy who has explosive pace and backs himself to the hilt to damage moving forward, are now also frequently around the footy.
The star duo will likely be the All-Australians of that mix, perfectly complementing each other as inside-outside midfielders who are rarely down together; but it’s the unit that is now more than the sum of its parts.
Against the Crows, it was this cohesion at the coalface that saved the game: the Crows dominated clearances in the first half of the final quarter, yet despite winning six more of them, it was the Suns with three goals to two from that source.
It was this clash of styles which ebbed and flowed for three quarter and 25 minutes, and left one point between them in the closing stages. And there was more drama to come than just missed free kicks.
Four minutes remain as the Suns, from what proves the game’s final centre bounce, surges it forward; it only gets to the 50, though, before Mitch Hinge wins the ball from Luke Nankervis amid a sea of red, turns, and does what he’s done all day: lace out a teammate on the wing in Isaac Cumming with a pinpoint pass.
The Crows are out – Cumming gives wide to James Peatling, who goes long down the line, with Alex Neal-Bullen racing after the ball goalside of his opponent.
That opponent, though, is Jeffrey, he of the heroic Walker smother from a few minutes earlier: with aching muscles surely screaming, he matches Neal-Bullen stride for stride, turning a five-metre deficit into nothing in the time it takes the Crow to gather the bouncing ball, wrapping him up in a bonecrushing tackle as he first tries to evade, then to go to ground for a high free.
Neither come. Holding the ball. The Suns’ tackling pressure has outmustered the Crows’ slingshot – for now.
Fast forward a minute, and after calmly soaking up some time, it’s Gold Coast’s turn to attack, with Ben Long darting out the back after a long ball up the line and, under duress, snapping the ball back towards the hot spot.
There are Suns everywhere, but crucially, one Jake Soligo: out of desperation, as the ball bobbles around, he throws a boot at it, hacking up the corridor in a desperate bid to buy his backline some time.
Crazily, miraculously, it finds Izak Rankine on the lead. The Crows, having been holding on for grim death, now can surge once more.
It ends with Keays, who drives the ball long, and after a Suns spoil, it spills to Cumming. Only, he barely has the chance to think about what he’s going to do next before Rioli arrives at speed and wraps him up. Ball-up.
From the throw-up, the ball bobbles out to Dawson, set up on the edge of 50 exactly for this: under fierce pressure, though, the Crows’ best kick can only bomb long, high, and hope for the best.
It doesn’t work – Mac Andrew’s spoil is unopposed, with only Ben Keays representing the Crows at the drop zone; the fist finds Rioli at the front of the contest, and the Suns repel again.
Respite is fleeting, though: from a boundary throw-in, scarcely a minute left on the clock, the Crows pull out a trick play – Reilly O’Brien flips out the back to Dawson, who takes on a tackler and handballs forward to Peatling, again in space.
He takes territory, and chooses – fatefully – to drive it long. Thilthorpe is there, he and Collins just a fraction away from where the ball is going to drop. Under it, though, is Rankine.
Was it a mark? Perhaps. Should it have been a free kick? Yes, probably – though in the heat of the moment, Collins’ desperate lunge at the ball, jarring it free of Rankine’s grasp and taking him down for good measure, is executed well enough that it would probably fool the footy world had it happened in the second minute of the third quarter of a blowout game, and not analysed to within an inch of its life as has happened now.
Compounding the Crows’ fury, moments later, John Noble wins himself a high free kick after trying to duck under a Neal-Bullen tackle. The Suns are safe – again, though, only for now.
The Crows, though, have one last chance. Again, the clearance comes Adelaide’s way, with Cumming taking on a tackler and dishing to Milera, who in turn finds – in space again – Peatling at the front of the contest.
Dodging two tacklers with the verve and ambition that sums up these Crows, Peatling jinks his way inboard – but here is where he makes the match-defining mistake.
The Crows have done the bulk of their scoring through making smart decisions with the ball moving forward: here, Peatling has Milera riding shotgun for a handball and free space in front of him, and open at half-forward for the kick over the top is Jake Soligo.
If Peatling hits one of those targets, the Crows surely score, and with it take at least two premiership points back home.
Instead, he does what every desperate footballer does with time running out: he bombs it long to the hot spot, where Thilthorpe and Fogarty are his hopes.
But Thilthorpe, too, errs: his great strength turns a hindrace as he throws Collins aside too forcefully for the umpire’s blood. It’s a holding the man free kick. The Suns repel again.
Still the Crows come: the time ticks past 30 seconds left when Cumming receives at half-forward, hemmed in on the boundary line, and makes another vital choice.
He’s well within range, and given the one-point deficit has every right to have a ping and try and score at least a point, even with two Suns in Flanders and Bodhi Uwland bearing down on him.
Instead, he tries to lace out a pass to a hard-leading Thilthorpe in the pocket: and a closing Andrew does just enough to deny him, first spoiling the ball out of his hands, then (luckily) escaping being pinged for taking him high following up at ground level to get the footy to safety, holding the footy on the edge of the boundary, not taking it out, and relishing the chance to put 40 metres’ worth of kick between the ball and the Crows’ goals.
Adelaide are out of time.
Turn any of those crucial variables around in the last minutes – Peatling finding a spare target instead of blazing, Rankine or Thilthorpe’s free kicks, Cumming passing instead of going for home – and the Crows remain unbeaten in 2025.
But that’s not how footy works. This was a game won over four quarters of desperation, brilliance and endless perseverence from both sides.
To distill it down to moments does nobody justice – except to say that, to the end, Gold Coast did just enough to hold on.
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