{"id":798445,"date":"2026-07-13T22:30:16","date_gmt":"2026-07-13T22:30:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/798445\/"},"modified":"2026-07-13T22:30:16","modified_gmt":"2026-07-13T22:30:16","slug":"afl-news-comments-of-gold-coast-suns-coach-damien-hardwick-publicly-contradicted-by-ceo-mark-evans-statement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/798445\/","title":{"rendered":"AFL news: Comments of Gold Coast Suns coach Damien Hardwick publicly contradicted by CEO Mark Evans\u2019 statement"},"content":{"rendered":"

Gold Coast<\/a> CEO Mark Evans has walked back eyebrow-raising comments made by Damien Hardwick<\/a>, who effectively conceded the club was no longer a chance of playing finals footy this season<\/a>.<\/p>\n

A frustrated Hardwick said after Saturday night\u2019s 79-point defeat to Adelaide<\/a> that his team\u2019s season was \u201ceffectively gone\u201d.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Gold Coast coach Damien Hardwick.\u00a0Getty<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat we\u2019ve got to do is forge our way forward about what we want ourselves to look like for next year, from my point of view,\u201d the Suns coach said after the Adelaide Oval match.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe way we\u2019re playing, we don\u2019t deserve to make it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hardwick\u2019s comments were met with confusion, and criticism, throughout the AFL<\/a> world, given the Suns are only one win outside the wildcard spots with six games remaining.<\/p>\n

The Suns are sitting 14th on the ladder ahead of a home game against the Western Bulldogs on Saturday afternoon.<\/p>\n

The expansion club has lost its past seven games and many of its highest-paid stars, including 2025 Brownlow Medal winner Matt Rowell<\/a>, are underperforming.<\/p>\n

In a statement provided to Nine\u2019s Footy Classified, the Gold Coast CEO painted a different narrative to Hardwick.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat comment was a reaction to how we felt after a performance well below our best, and what\u2019s needed to compete with the best in the competition,\u201d Evans said.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll of our efforts have to go into getting improved performances \u2013 and wins.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe ladder position, and chances of finals, come from that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Essendon legend Matthew Lloyd<\/a> believes Evans would have had choice words with Hardwick privately.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think Mark Evans would agree behind the scenes with Damien Hardwick that they\u2019re not going to win the premiership this year. You just don\u2019t win a premiership when you lose seven in a row and sit 14th on the ladder,\u201d Lloyd said on Footy Classified.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Mark Evans\u2019 statement about Damien Hardwick\u2019s comments.\u00a0Nine<\/p>\n

\u201cBut in the statement he has to present to the fans, members, and players, he has to maintain that there\u2019s still a quarter of the season to go and that they can still play finals.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe public statement he\u2019s making is very different from what he\u2019d say to Damien Hardwick privately. You simply cannot present it like that to the public. You can\u2019t speak that way with six rounds to go and only being one game out of the top 10.\u201d<\/p>\n

Geelong great Jimmy Bartel<\/a> was taken aback by Hardwick\u2019s remarks.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey are playing a lot of teams positioned between sith and 12th [on the run home]. We always talk about eight-point games, but if you actually beat those teams, you start to leapfrog them. That\u2019s why I\u2019m surprised they conceded so early and so far out,\u201d Bartel said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m curious whether that public admission was actually a tactic to take the pressure off the team, hoping they might play a bit more free and easy.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut you very rarely hear a coach concede like that this far out from the finals.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Gold Coast CEO Mark Evans has walked back eyebrow-raising comments made by Damien Hardwick, who effectively conceded the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":798446,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[560],"tags":[638,64,63,55,639,85],"class_list":["post-798445","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\/798445","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=798445"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/798445\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/798446"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=798445"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=798445"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=798445"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}