INJURY stricken and inexperienced, Gold Coast first-year coach Rhyce Shaw had a tough baptism of fire in 2025, with the former Suns Academy coach needing to battle through an emotionally and physically tough year. In a glimmer of positivity, the Suns snatched a last-round win with a victory over Richmond to only be percentage behind both the Tigers and GWS Giants.

The Suns did collect the wooden spoon – one spot worse than their 17th placed finish last season, but the 5.9 (39) to 3.7 (25) result on the road against Richmond at Ikon Park was reward for hard work for the young squad.

Richmond surged to a five-point lead at the final break in what had been a dour affair to that point, before Gold Coast booted the only three goals of the fourth term to come away with the morale-boosting four points.

“We played some pretty good footy,” Shaw said. “I thought we lost a bit of control in that third quarter and that was probably what put us under the pump a bit, we didn’t control the footy, we didn’t control the contest and they started to get on top. “Last quarter we did a really good job, we setup how we wanted to set up, we controlled the ground, controlled the ball and then we got going which was really pleasing.”

Gold Coast had to overcome the loss of Katie Lynch to concussion which Shaw conceded “thew a spanner in the works” but after being able to “shuffle a few things” the Suns got the game back on their terms.

While the win was a positive, Shaw conceded his first year as senior coach had not been easy, for either the coaching panel or the playing group.

“It’s been hard, it’s been really hard I must admit that,” he said. “It’s difficult when you are losing by so much and we’ve had really good performances but haven’t got over the line. “I think we’ve played eight of the top 11 teams which we’ve had a shocking run in terms of that, but the girls just keep fighting and we keep showing up and today’s a great reward for that I reckon.

“I’m really proud of that group, we’ve got a lot of young kids in there, we’ve got some older experienced players in there, but we’ve been able to continue and be consistent and keep training hard and then just trying to put it out on the park and we did that today which was great.”

Fortunately for the gold and red side, the Suns have no shortage of elite talent coming through the Academy and therefore available in next month’s AFLW Draft. When asked about the club being able to add so much top-end youth, Shaw said it would an “interesting period” but “really exciting” for the club.

“We’ve put a lot of work into our Academy, spent a lot of money, but a lot of time, put a lot of resources into it. Do a really good job of promoting AFL in Queensland, growing the game,” he said.

“I think our club does it as good as I’ve seen, so hopefully we get some reward with a couple of players in the draft which I’m really confident we’ll do, but it’s just a really exciting time for our football club and moving forward even though we haven’t had a good year, the journey ahead looks really good.”

With the ability to trade future picks, the Suns may look to off-load their 2026 AFLW Draft selections in order to have more picks in this year’s draft. Sides like Brisbane or the Giants may look to next year’s draft more than this year’s given their respective bottom-age crops compared to their top-age contemporaries.