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Find your Sport Nation frequencyWhy not us: Budarick’s bold Suns declaration
Nicholas Quinlan • April 5th, 2025 12:20 pm
Gold Coast defender Connor Budarick believes that the Suns have what it takes to go all the way to win a maiden AFL premiership.
The Suns have been convincing in their 2-0 start with dominant wins over Melbourne and West Coast which has them sitting well inside the eight.
Budarick says that the Suns have been aiming high after a positive start to the season under Damien Hardwick.
“Coming into this year, we set high expectations for ourselves,” Budarick declared on SENQ Breakfast.
“We obviously want to strive to play finals and ultimately win a flag.
“We don’t see why that couldn’t be us this year; we feel that we have the talent, we’ve got the right system, but it is a long season and we have started well so, we need to keep that consistent.”
Consistency has been an issue for Gold Coast throughout their tenure as an AFL club.
In their 15-year history, the Suns have not finished higher than 12th and have previously shown promise early in a season, only to burn out and be eliminated from finals contention.
While the Suns were disappointed not to have played finals in Hardwick’s first season, Budarick has noted that the experience of playing in the triple premiership coach's system has helped build more confidence in the group.
“I just think that last year, with a new coach with Dimma coming in and his new system, I think last year we got a taste of it,” Budarick said.
“And we were able to play one season with the new system, so I think we got a head start going into this year.
“95 per cent of the team already knew the system, so once we sort of started pre-season we already knew what we were doing and didn’t have to start from scratch.
“We were able to gel really quick again and go into the year sort of knowing what we were doing which was pretty good.”
Gold Coast will play their first home game for the year when they take on the 3-0 Adelaide Crows at People First Stadium on Saturday afternoon.
