(The column to read during Better Homes & Gardens)
The Suns of the Gold Coast - a potted history
THE smell of a smoke machine, the sound of The Temper Trap and the sight of footballers mouthing the words of an unfamiliar club song were enough to identify the launch of a new AFL team, with the Gold Coast Suns being unveiled to an expectant football public last week.
But in actual fact the Suns already have a long and proud history that will only be enhanced when Guy McKenna leads his men into Round 1, 2011.
600 BC: The Ancient Greeks identify the Suns as a collection of solar deities to be placed on a par with Anthony Koutoufides and Angelo Lekkas.
300 AD: The Roman Empire begins depicting the Suns on a series of coins and other forms of currency such as footy cards. A rare printing of Daniel Harris in a North Melbourne jumper was said to be much prized by Emperor Caligula.
1501: A mathematical model of heliocentrism (the belief that at a future date, probably 2011, all the football planets would revolve around the Suns) is unveiled by German astronomer Copernicus.
1624: Galileo invents a telescope capable of viewing closed training sessions from nearly a kilometre away and posits the theory that Nathan Ablett may be suffering from a dodgy hamstring rather than the conventional wisdom of the time which suggested that all the star forward needed was a course of leeches.
1911: Albert Einstein proposes his theory of mass-energy equivalence based on careful research of the Suns’ statistics from Champion Data. Suggestions that E = mc2 was actually a coded reference to the Suns’ energy levels coming from a cloned Guy McKenna proved unfounded.
1959: NASA launches the early Pioneer satellites to orbit round the Suns’ Carrara stadium and provide the first detailed measurements of the solar magnetic field. Pioneers 7 and 9 were both grounded following a series of drop punts from Karmichael Hunt who had decided to use them as target practice.
1993: The Suns enjoy their most successful year as a club, advancing all the way to the finals before falling in six games to the Chicago Bulls led by Michael Jordan. This success proves the team’s undoing, leaving it without any high draft picks for approximately 17 years.
2011: Following a period of collective universal darkness, the Suns are revived and a grateful planet basks in the glow of their inaugural season.
Tweets you didn’t see this week
- Upgraded Sydney Showground to host Team GWS games along with sheepdog trial curtain-raiser
- Josh Carr finishes career with perfect Showdown record - reported in 10 of 10 games
- Requests from Ferrari for Warren Tredrea farewell motorcade to pull over ignored by Port Adelaide
- New Gold Coast club song receives strong approval in focus group testing - particularly in Dockers club song comparison category
- Kangaroos mascot called in as final emergency for game against Bombers - strong leaper but clumsy with the Sherrin in his paws
Dream team smokie: Josh Gibson
Forget the ball-magnets, goal-kickers and lovers of the contested footy. Here are Dream Team superheroes you won’t hear the ‘experts’ talking about.
Josh’s ability to deliver the low scores at Hawthorn that Kangaroos fans know he’s capable of was curtailed by a serious hamstring injury before the 2010 season began.
In the six games since, Gibson’s done his usual sensational job of playing undersized on some of the tallest and strongest forwards and restricting their output.
Naturally this has restricted his own Dream Team output as well and having dropped $123,000 in value and with upcoming games against leading clubs offering the chance for more selfless, accountable footy, Josh has every chance to bring in sub-40 point scores for the 2817 hardy souls who’ve selected him in their teams.
The views in this story are those of the author and not necessarily those of the clubs or the AFL.
