{"id":822692,"date":"2026-07-25T09:38:15","date_gmt":"2026-07-25T09:38:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/822692\/"},"modified":"2026-07-25T09:38:15","modified_gmt":"2026-07-25T09:38:15","slug":"afl-2026-damien-hardwick-makes-big-call-on-gold-coast-suns-in-press-conference-losing-streak-video-reaction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/822692\/","title":{"rendered":"AFL 2026: Damien Hardwick makes big call on Gold Coast Suns in press conference, losing streak, video, reaction"},"content":{"rendered":"

Gold Coast Suns coach Damien Hardwick says their nine-game losing streak<\/a> could prove the \u201cmost important in our club\u2019s history\u201d.<\/p>\n

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Carlton worsened the Suns\u2019 free-fall on Saturday afternoon at Marvel Stadium, storming home to win by 13 points.<\/p>\n

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Hardwick says the Suns must stay resilient, citing his experiences of dark periods preceding patches of success. <\/p>\n

\u201cOne thing I will say, I\u2019ve been around footy a long time, the spirit and the drive of this group is as strong as ever,\u201d Hardwick said.<\/p>\n

\u201cNoah (Anderson) and his crew have done an incredible job with that, the easy thing for any side I reckon in our situation to lose nine games in a row would be drop their bundle \u2013 they don\u2019t do that.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a credit to Noah and Rowelly and those types of players, sitting there and still trying their absolute hardest to get us to a win.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s important for our fans, it\u2019s important for our players. These nine games might be the most important in our club\u2019s history.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople sit there and go, \u2018What are you talking about?\u2019 Well, I\u2019ve been in situations before where situations like this have occurred.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd you get your greatest growth from your darkest times, so we\u2019re learning things along the way and at the end of the day, success isn\u2019t linear, but it might be the thing that actually sparks us (into) something pretty special.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018F*** YOU\u2019: Suns pair\u2019s fiery exchange exposed as great questions \u2018severe\u2019 act<\/a><\/p>\n

Petracca gives Lombard huge spray! | 00:54<\/p>\n

The obvious link is Hardwick\u2019s 2016 season at Richmond, when he survived a performance review before leading the Tigers to three of the next four premierships.<\/p>\n

But Hardwick says there are many more examples around the world the Suns can draw on for inspiration.<\/p>\n

\u201cI can draw a lot of parallels throughout my career but also around world sport, things happen for a reason,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor whatever reason we\u2019re not playing as well as we\u2019d like, we\u2019re not where we need to be but we\u2019re not as bad as the record suggests.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo what we\u2019ve got to do is keep turning, keep getting to work and keep believing in what we\u2019re doing and more importantly keep pushing that barrow up the hill.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Gold Coast Suns coach Damien Hardwick says their nine-game losing streak could prove the \u201cmost important in our…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":822693,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[560],"tags":[638,64,63,55,639,85],"class_list":["post-822692","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\/822692","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=822692"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/822692\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/822693"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=822692"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=822692"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=822692"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}