Gold Coast Suns go from last to finals in 12 months
Twelve months after finishing last on the AFLW ladder, the Gold Coast Suns have reached a finals series, their third in club history, ABC News reports. The ladder is the table that ranks every team by wins, and the Suns were at the bottom of it in 2025.
That season was a hard one. The Suns conceded an average of 64.3 points a game, the most in the club's history, and lost by an average of 37.8 points, a record. Their own average score slipped from 28.3 in 2024 to 26.6 in 2025.
Rhyce Shaw took over as head coach in 2025, after Cam Joyce's final season in charge in 2024. Shaw changed how the team played. The Suns moved away from a stoppage-heavy game, where players battled for the ball in the scrums that follow a break in play, and towards a controlled kick-mark style. That means moving the ball by hand and foot, and valuing the uncontested possessions that come from it.
The numbers show where the work went. In 2024 the Suns conceded an average of 27.2 points a game from turnovers, when the ball is lost to the opponent. That rose to 42.1 in 2025. In 2026 it fell to 23.1. Points conceded from stoppages went from 21.0 in 2025 to 12.0 this year, according to the ABC.
Defence also improved in the way it was measured. In 2025 the Suns allowed opponents an average of 40.7 entries into their forward 50-metre zone, 9.6 marks inside it and 23.2 shots on goal a game. All three were club records for the worst. The Suns also kicked 30 or more points five times in 2025, up from three times in 2024.
The squad changed fast. The club transformed a third of its list in a single night at the December draft, the annual meeting where teams pick new players, ahead of 2026. Sunny Lappin, Mikayla Nurse, Ava Usher and Dekota Baron were among those brought into the club this year.
The ABC describes several of the young players as children when the rebuild started. Some of them are now central to a side that is playing finals football.
The club's roots go back to June 2017, when it made a joint bid with AFL Queensland to join the AFLW competition. In February 2026 the club appointed Gallomarino as its AFLW Head of High Performance, the role that oversees training and player development.
Off the field, the club said the squad and coaches built flat-pack furniture for families in need through the RizeUp program, in an update published on 22 October.
The Suns' 2026 season took them across the country. They played Melbourne at Great Barrier Reef Arena on October 10 and Adelaide at Thomas Farms Oval on October 17. They also met Brisbane in Round 8 and GWS in Round 12.
A turnaround like this rarely comes from one result. It came from a clear change in how the team played, a big turnover of players, and a group of young players who grew up inside the rebuild.
