DESPITE four straight losses, a mounting injury toll and a brutal month ahead, Gold Coast is not writing its season off, says coach Rodney Eade.
The Suns were thumped for a second straight week on Saturday night, handed a 73-point belting by Melbourne to slip to 3-4 after winning its first three matches.
In the next four weeks they play Greater Western Sydney (away), Adelaide (home), West Coast (away) and the Sydney Swans (home).
Five talking points: Gold Coast v Melbourne
They will be without wingmen Matt Rosa (hamstring) and Alex Sexton (broken arm) who were taken off early in the Demons loss, adding to an already long injury list.
Suspended defender Steven May (two more weeks), Rory Thompson, David Swallow, Jaeger O'Meara, Michael Rischitelli and Trent McKenzie are already missing.
Ablett the peacemaker
But despite conceding the next few weeks would be difficult, Eade refused to write off the Suns' season.
"I’ve got confidence in the group, we just need some troops back," he said.
"Obviously our support underneath needs a lot of work and needs some more time to develop, but it’s going to be a pretty even season, so I wouldn’t throw the baby out with a bathwater.
"I think people can get emotional on a couple of performances, and those couple of performances might be repeated in the next couple of weeks, you never know, with who we’re playing and the players we’re going to have.
"We’ve just got to come back to that fighting mentality and hang in there until the tide turns, and it will turn."
Tom Lynch can do no wrong! He has four goals in the first half as the Suns lead the Dees. #AFLSunsDees https://t.co/1qpZO7YsiQ
— AFL (@AFL) May 7, 2016
After last week's 120-point loss to Geelong, Eade said his team was more "up for the fight" against Melbourne, but struggled to run without Sexton, Rosa and severely hampered duo Touk Miller (ankle) and Dion Prestia (knee).
Eade said Miller and Prestia played the game out on courage and would have been replaced in the normal course of events.
Despite an acceptable effort, the third quarter was poor from the Suns, with Melbourne kicking nine goals to blown the game wide open after they trailed by just five points at the break.
"We are poor in the centre square, we needed to be clean and we weren't, our ground ball (effort) was poor and we just gave them another look," Eade said.
"A few things added up and a few players dropped in confidence in the back half, some really battled, which exposed us a bit.
"I think we struggled to put enough pressure on around where we should have put some pressure on, around the ball.
"They had a lot of inside 50s, the weight of numbers told in the end."