What a nice surprise! The Suns pulled out their best performance of the year against their biggest rivals. I was extremely pessimistic going into the game and it is a massive lift for fans to see that the players haven’t given up on the season. That game has re-lit the fire and no matter how results go from here on out, that kind of effort will make every game a must-watch. I don’t know if the Suns have ever beaten a top 4 side, especially this late in the year. They came in with a strong gameplan and the execution was pretty flawless from the first bounce.
An All-round battering
That was a real team performance, every sector of the game held up and played its role in deciding the victory. The whole side set up well in defence and limited Brisbane’s ball movement, the defence controlled the air and applied pressure on the ground. The midfield won the contest battle and moved the ball sharply through the corridor and the forwards did a great job finding space and forcing errors from Brisbane defenders. Stephen King will be happy with the whole squad, they all had important moments and played as a collective rather than as individuals.
Silencing Neale
Touk Miller put in one of his greatest performances today, we all know he isn’t a fan of the Lions and that motivated him to niggle and dominate Lachie Neale all day. From the first bounce he was on him like a limpet and every time another player came into Neale’s orbit they would lay some kind of contact on him too. He was held to 17 disposals, 4 clearances and 5 score involvements after winning the Marcus Ashcroft Medal in the last QClash. It was a throwback performance for MiIller who first shone on the national stage as a tagger in feisty Qclash games. He ran like a marathon runner and challenged Brisbane to follow him and they couldn’t do it, he gained over 500 metres as the Suns moved the ball fluently from defence throughout the game.
King finds form
If you had told me before that game that Ben King would kick 5 I absolutely would not have believed you. But King had a mammoth first half kicking 4 goals and setting up the win for the Suns. He was consistently competitive in the air and contributed to keeping Andrews and Payne to just one intercept mark between them. I don’t think most people thought King would recover his form purely through taking marks and kicking goals but he earned it by running intelligently to find space and most of his chances were from fairly uncontested marks. He has set himself up for a nice run to close out the season, he had three against Adelaide last time out so hopefully he can carry this form and get to 50 goals. That would be a real achievement coming off such a tough injury,
Forward pressure
That effort from the talls to keep the ball from being intercepted was backed up superbly by pressure from the small forwards, wings and midfielders. By my measure 5 of the Suns’ goals came from forward pressure and a turnover. That is why most of them were easier opportunities that were less challenging to convert and why the Suns finished kicking 15.6. Swallow and Holman in particular ran around like bowling balls clattering into red and blue pins. Within those missed chances and entries I counted 6 that should have been scored. Ainsworth and Swallow both missed kickable snaps, Holman missed an easy chip kick to King for an uncontested mark and Humphrey missed a very kickable set shot. Those were just the ones I noted down in detail. Therefore there was room for the Suns to put on an even bigger score. While they played an excellent all-round forward game there is still room for some more clinical finishing, the ceiling is nowhere near being reached by this attack despite such a strong showing today.
Ball movement forward and halting it coming back the other way
Perhaps the aspect that impressed me the most was the perfomance between the arcs. The Suns finally played with greater tempo when coming out of defence. They moved the ball as well as I have ever seen against a good side. They only resorted to the long down the line kick when things were really slowed down, and for once the skill level when disposing the ball was up to standard. Miller, Anderson, Atkins and Powell all deserve great credit for getting the ball moving and into an uncongested F50.
And in defending ball movement the Suns absolutely strangled Brisbane. They guarded the corridor like hawks and dominated the air along the boundary, Andrew, Collins and Witts all made their presence felt and either marked or allowed the ravenous groundball players to hoover up the ball. This limited quality entries for Brisbane and kept Cameron from impacting the game too much. Daniher and Hipwood don’t do as much damage when the ball isn’t coming in cleanly and the Suns made sure the Lions wouldn’t score without working hard for it. It is a huge achievement to keep the best scoring team in the league to 55 points and just 20 scoring shots. I really didn’t think they had this kind performance in them, that was a genuine revelation and raises Stephen King and his assistants in my estimation. It feels great to be writing about such a fantastic, uplifting performance. Technically finals are still a possibility and while it’s almost impossible the players will be fighting for it till they are mathematically eliminated. It will be another challenge for the squad to get back up for a tough road trip to SA next week. I’ll just reiterate that for me the results aren’t the priority but if they can play with the intensity and tactical astuteness they did today then the season will end very positively
Eyes on the Suns 
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