{"id":840989,"date":"2026-08-03T02:40:10","date_gmt":"2026-08-03T02:40:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/840989\/"},"modified":"2026-08-03T02:40:10","modified_gmt":"2026-08-03T02:40:10","slug":"ben-king-sent-message-by-gold-coast-ahead-of-potential-hawthorn-move","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/840989\/","title":{"rendered":"Ben King sent message by Gold Coast ahead of potential Hawthorn move"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.sportingnews.com\/au\/afl\/gold-coast-suns\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Gold Coast<\/a> appear to be preparing for life after Ben King with a positional change for the Coleman Medal contender ahead of his potential move to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sportingnews.com\/au\/afl\/hawthorn\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Hawthorn<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>With King looking likely to join the Hawks next season as a restricted free agent and the Suns unlikely to make wildcard, coach Damien Hardwick appeared to be getting ready for 2027 by using talented key forward Jed Walter as the main main in the nine-point loss to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sportingnews.com\/au\/afl\/melbourne\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Melbourne<\/a> on Sunday, according to Leigh Montagna.<\/p>\n<p>King, who is usually the deepest forward at Gold Coast was used further up the ground, while Walter was situated closer to goal, in an observation noticed by the Fox Footy analyst.<\/p>\n<p>Walter kicked three goals from five scoring shots, while King booted two goals from four scores.<\/p>\n<p>MORE:\u00a0<a target=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/www.sportingnews.com\/au\/afl\/news\/shock-scott-pendlebury-call-made-essendon-coaching-role\/eca1a37c4a1c7ff81006765f\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Shock Scott Pendlebury call made on Essendon coaching role<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt looked like a changing of the guard in regards to the position,\u201d Montagna said on First Crack.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIn this game, he was getting into positions that he\u2019s not used to, Ben King. It was Jed Walter who was playing the deepest as the focal point \u2014 and it looked really good.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI just wonder whether if this was intentional from Damien Hardwick, to say: \u2018Right, well Ben, if you\u2019re here next year we\u2019re starting to plan for next season \u2014 and it\u2019s going to be around this guy as our number one key forward that we\u2019ve committed to.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>King looks almost certain to leave the Suns at the end of the season having not signed the most recent contract offer from the club.<\/p>\n<p>Hawthorn are believed to be in the box seat to snare King, while <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sportingnews.com\/au\/afl\/collingwood\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Collingwood<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sportingnews.com\/au\/afl\/essendon\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Essendon<\/a> have also shown interest.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Gold Coast appear to be preparing for life after Ben King with a positional change for the Coleman&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":840990,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[560],"tags":[638,64,63,55,639,85],"class_list":["post-840989","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\/840989","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=840989"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/840989\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/840990"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=840989"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=840989"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=840989"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}