Gold Coast Suns coach Damien Hardwick moved quickly to reject fractures among his playing group.

The Suns have lost three consecutive matches and await an important clash against Hawthorn at home on Friday night.

The most recent loss to Geelong included exchanges between players during play and prompted reports of disenchantment between players and coaches.

But Hardwick declared the Suns fully aligned and the reports “a non-event”.

“The fact of the matter is we’re in an AFL environment and there’s going to be tension within footy clubs, especially when you’re not performing,” Hardwick said.

“I probably argue or challenge anyone who hasn’t got tension within their club, they’re probably not a high-performance environment.

“We have big boy conversations, no doubt about that, and we’re all on the same page.

“The fact of the matter is in team meetings, in reviews, we sort of sit there, provide clarity for the players and we walk out aligned.

“These stories seem to stem around all of a sudden people think there’s a little bit of an issue – there’s no issue.

“From our point of view, it’s a non-event … I don’t know in Melbourne, but sources and all this sort of thing for me, we just move on pretty quickly.”

Hardwick was eager to flip the script on the potentially “demonstrative” interactions between his players.

“I think what they’ve got is an understanding of how they want to play and great leadership demands that players take action on field,” he said.

“I sort of looked at our decisions we made in that last quarter and our players were making motions that that was not the required plans.

“They sit there and communicate that, and that’s the art of leadership. Sometimes accepting feedback and giving feedback is challenging at times, especially in a high-pressure environment such as an AFL game.

“They can all get better, I can get better and we can all move through it, what we’ve got to do is establish, ‘Listen, when we are in those situations, this is how we get a response’.

“What people need to understand is players are trying to get an immediate response or a certain situation rectified quickly and sometimes it might look demonstrative.

“But I guarantee you, if you look at any AFL game on the weekend, you’ll see those kind of signals through every side.

“Sometimes when your side has a couple of losses we put the microscope on a side, it was our turn this week, it was Brisbane last week, it’ll be someone else next week.

“This is all part of the AFL cycle, I’ve been in it for a long time, I know how it operates, (it’s) pretty easy.”

Originally published as AFL 2026: Gold Coast Suns coach Damien Hardwick addresses reports of team fractures