Christian Petracca is in doubt for what would be his first clash with Melbourne since leaving the club, after he was sidelined with “hamstring awareness” in Gold Coast’s 68-point rout of Richmond.<\/p>\n
Ben King kicked seven goals to power the unbeaten Suns to their greatest winning margin at the MCG in Saturday’s dominant 19.14 (128) to 9.6 (60) victory, which was soured when Petracca went off in the third quarter.<\/p>\n
The in-form midfield star had 20 disposals before hurting his right hamstring in a tackle from Tiger James Trezise.<\/p>\n
Ben King of the Suns celebrates a goal against the Tigers.\u00a0Michael Willson\/AFL Photos via Getty Images<\/p>\n
An upcoming bye means Petracca has 15 days to prepare for Gold Coast’s next fixture, against the Demons at the MCG on April 5.<\/p>\n
“He just got pushed as he kicked and had a little bit of hamstring awareness, so we sort of just parked him really,” Suns coach Damien Hardwick said.<\/p>\n
“He’s obviously an important player for us. We’ve got a bye next week, so we’ll just work through the process of getting him scanned.<\/p>\n
“We’re always hopeful, but we’ll just wait until our doctors can assess it and then we’ll figure out what the correct decision will be.”<\/p>\n
The setback also threatens to dent Petracca’s Brownlow Medal hopes after he was best afield in his first two games for Gold Coast.<\/p>\n
Hardwick was full of praise for his gun off-season acquisition, who has been revitalised since ending his decade-long stint with Melbourne.<\/p>\n
“He loves playing. You see the smile on his face and he’s loving the way his footy’s going, first and foremost,” Hardwick said.<\/p>\n
“He’s probably been pretty close to the best player in the first couple of rounds and the way he’s gone about it, but he’s just also loving the fact that he’s got a new lease on life at a new footy club.<\/p>\n
“He’s been a revelation for us both on and off the field. We’re very, very lucky to have him at our club.”<\/p>\n
The ladder-leading Suns (3-0) extended their winning start to the season as Hardwick chalked up a personal milestone with his 200th victory as an AFL head coach.<\/p>\n
King and fellow key forward Ethan Read (four goals) fired in attack, with Touk Miller (31 disposals), Bodhi Uwland (29) and captain Noah Anderson (21) all influential.<\/p>\n
But Bailey Humphrey will come under match review scrutiny over a sling tackle on Maurice Rioli, whose head hit the turf in the incident.<\/p>\n
Rioli, who was not seriously hurt and played out the match, was earlier involved in a running battle with his nephew Daniel Rioli, with the pair catching each other holding the ball before halftime.<\/p>\n
Richmond, who were well served by Jayden Short (32 disposals) and Seth Campbell (three goals), lost senior players Tom Lynch and Toby Nankervis to hamstring injuries.<\/p>\n
They were in the fight until spearhead Lynch went down halfway through the second quarter, before Gold Coast effectively ended the contest with a devastating six-goal burst leading into halftime.<\/p>\n
“Our game looked really strong … but then obviously when Lynchy went down it does throw your structure out a fair bit,” Tigers coach Adem Yze said.<\/p>\n
“We lost our way, we lost territory, we got belted – it was 21 entries to nine for the (second) quarter.<\/p>\n
“We couldn’t get out of our back end and they kicked six in a row.<\/p>\n
“To the boys’ credit they didn’t lose spirit, and the third quarter was a real positive for our group.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Christian Petracca is in doubt for what would be his first clash with Melbourne since leaving the club,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":555175,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[560],"tags":[638,64,63,55,639,85],"class_list":["post-555174","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"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/555174","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=555174"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/555174\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/555175"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=555174"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=555174"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=555174"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}