fter kicking just three goals in a 51-point loss to the same side on Sunday<\/a>, they dropped to 11th on the ladder with a 7-8 record.<\/p>\nAfter five consecutive losses, Hardwick said a new season starts for them on Saturday when they host Collingwood \u2014 the team just two points above them on the ladder.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s an eight-week season for us,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt the end of the day, we win more games than we don\u2019t, we probably scrape into the top 10. That\u2019s got to be the aim of us at the moment.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou do look at our side from last year to this year, from this time we played them here, 10 changes. So, it\u2019s significant, we know that, we understand that.<\/p>\n
The Suns kicked just three goals. Picture: Janelle St Pierre\/AFL Photos\/via Getty ImagesSource: Getty Images<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat we\u2019ve got to do, or what I\u2019ve got to do, is get our boys playing a better, more consistent brand of footy.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis side (Fremantle) is very well driven in three phases of the game and we looked anything but that tonight.<\/p>\n
\u201cLast week (against Hawthorn) was a good game of footy for us. Tonight, we just reverted back to the middling side that we probably sit at the moment, so I\u2019ve got some works to do.\u201d<\/p>\n
Gold Coast\u2019s 3.11 return was its lowest ever against the Dockers.<\/p>\n
The Suns went forward 40 times, but could manage just four marks inside their attacking 50m zone. Fremantle had 17.<\/p>\n
Hardwick put the blame on the movement of the ball when going forward.<\/p>\n
\u201cI thought our boys inside 50 today was really, really poor,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI thought we had momentum where we should have scored and got goals, and we just didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n
Longmuir praises patient Freo | 07:32<\/p>\n
\u201cWe fluffed it.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re the frustrating ones, especially when you\u2019re away, you need to capitalise on those opportunities, especially in the first and second quarter.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it was where we had some looks, where we just weren\u2019t clean enough or good enough to get a score.<\/p>\n
\u201cEverything looked really, really hard.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe had opportunities where we could have passed off to a teammate to get a better shot on goal, and I spoke about this last week, and we didn\u2019t do it.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2014 NCA NewsWire<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Expectations on Gold Coast were high at the start of this season, but after round 16, coach Damien…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":766528,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[560],"tags":[638,64,63,55,639,85],"class_list":["post-766527","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\/766527","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=766527"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/766527\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/766528"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=766527"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=766527"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=766527"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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