Full match coverage and stats<\/a><\/p>\nWhat happened next will go down in Suns history.<\/p>\n
After Bodhi Uwland took a towering intercept mark on centre wing and pumped the ball back inside 50, Andrew loomed large, charging towards the incoming Sherrin and clutching it to his chest.<\/p>\n
Usually, a 30m set shot directly in front is close to a gimmie, but this was a chance to level the scores in the dying seconds of Gold Coast’s first ever final in front of 57,500 mostly Fremantle supporters.<\/p>\n
“I knew I had to take my moment and remain calm,” Andrew told AFL.com.au in the Suns’ jubilant dressing-room post-match.<\/p>\n
“I wasn’t really thinking too much. I took a deep breath and said: ‘this is it’.<\/p>\n
“If we wanted a chance, it had to go through. I’m just glad it did.”<\/p>\n
Of course, it is not the first time Andrew has played hero; he famously kicked a goal after the siren against Essendon late in 2024 to snatch the club’s first victory on the road \u2013 at the 11th attempt \u2013 of Damien Hardwick’s tenure.<\/p>\n
Earlier this season, it was Andrew again, this time in his defensive post, who got a seemingly impossible spoil in as Riley Thilthorpe looked bound to mark the ball and have a shot for Adelaide to win at People First Stadium.<\/p>\n
Andrew loves the big moment. With the Suns trailing, he could barely wait to run to the forward line.<\/p>\n
He’d waged an engrossing duel with Treacy all night, a player he greatly respects and “loves watching” \u2013 now it was time to reverse the roles.<\/p>\n
After getting the nod from the bench, runner Nick Malceski – the former Sydney defender who is no stranger to big goals in big finals – delivered the message for Andrew to swing forward.<\/p>\n
“I just kept looking at the bench. I knew we were down and there wasn’t long left, I kept looking over waiting for the nod (to go forward),” he said.<\/p>\n
He added with a laugh: “If it had have gone 30 seconds longer, I probably would have run down there myself”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Not for the first time, Mac Andrew was the hero for Gold Coast Mac Andrew celebrates match-winning moments…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":125753,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[560],"tags":[638,64,63,55,639,85,83],"class_list":["post-125752","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-afl","tag-afl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-australian-football-league","tag-australianfootballleague","tag-sports","tag-text"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125752","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=125752"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125752\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/125753"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=125752"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=125752"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=125752"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}