Round #18 - Play your moments
The point of departure was the moment Noah Anderson gathered the ball from the centre bounce, carried it, gave it off, got it back, kicks it slightly across his body, celebrating from the moment the ball left his boot, marking the place where the Gold Coast Suns’ ‘so far’ story met its ‘not yet’ story, creating an ‘us story’ for a club that, until this moment, has never been able to find it.
And the 'us story'... 'Play your moments'.
“You are never ready”.
But leadership isn't about being ready; it's about being present to what each moment asks of you.
It asks that you 'play your moments'.
And in the closing moments of Friday night's game against Premiership favourites Collingwood, Noah Anderson, the first-year Gold Coast Suns captain, didn’t just play the moment - he became it.
The Magpies had surged, as only they can, with all their guns firing. What seemed like an unassailable lead reversed itself in what seemed like minutes.
“All of a sudden, we looked like witches’ hats”, described Suns’ coach Damien Hardwick.
Some moments become stories, the best stories.
It could be a story of transition. We were this, and we are now something different. We are better. How good? We have just beaten the best team in it, come from behind when the game seemed lost, so why not?
It may be a story of resilience. We have found a way. The fact that it has never been easy means more, and more is what it will continue to ask of us.
It is definitely a story of grit. We have done the work, and we are doing the work, and we are committed to doing even more.
The combination of the three stories — transition, resilience, and grit —has created a new point of departure for the Gold Coast Suns. For the first time, the team, its structure, system, and dynamics, exist not only in the imagination of the club leaders who have their hands on the levers, but also for all of us to see, and for the players themselves, a reason to believe.
That the world can see it as well, of course, only makes it harder, the next mountain to climb.
The point of departure was the moment Noah Anderson gathered the ball from the centre bounce, carried it, gave it off, got it back, kicks it slightly across his body, celebrating from the moment the ball left his boot, marking the place where the Gold Coast Suns’ ‘so far’ story met its ‘not yet’ story, creating an ‘us story’ for a club that, until this moment, has never been able to find it.
And the 'us story'... 'Play your moments'.
This is who we are, and this is where we are heading. Now, look around - your future is in this room.
"Do you reckon we can do it?"
—
When Noah Anderson kicks the goal, the first player on the scene is David Swallow, the former skipper.
No player has meant more to this young club. He is the club’s first-ever draft pick, taken at number one way back in 2010, and is the only survivor from the club’s inaugural playing list.
He is now edging towards game 250, and for everything he offers this young, talented squad, it seems the most important thing is perspective - just what the game can and will ask of you.
Yet to play in a final, the context he brings is one of sacrifice, because that is what it means to play our team game. To know, accept and play your role, will ask something other than your preference, if you want ‘us’ to be any bloody good.
And the Suns have never been any good, but it never stopped him being these things.
He built a wonderful reputation in the game for never shirking an issue on the field. He also chose to stay when others didn’t, and I say this without judgment.
There were many good reasons to leave.
For him, however, there was no point staying if there was no possibility of future success. His sacrifice went beyond body; the club needed to build a list, and he saw the opportunity to play a key role, one with little precedent. On his own initiative, and while fully recognising he had been financially well rewarded across his career, he fully bought in on the efforts to get the list fundamentals into the kind of order it needs to be, in order to be good. He has been playing for less and encouraging his senior teammates to do the same, and they are now experiencing the kind of joy that had eluded them until now.
Noah Anderson embraced Gold Coast from the moment he was drafted. He came from a strong family with a fine football pedigree. His father Dean, was a two-time Hawthorn Premiership player, whose 83 games were 17 short of father-son qualification.
Noah was drafted at pick two, behind his great mate, Matt Rowell, and the friendship meant that he was unfairly judged as something less than what he was.
Gold Coast wasn’t a great club, but determined to be so, and it seems both player and club were prepared to take on this journey together, and leadership was going to be the difference maker.
Noah has been described to me as "a genuine person, a caring person, someone who competes like fuck" by someone who perhaps knows him best, from the many high-stakes considerations that clubs weigh-up when you have the first two selections in a draft, to the young captain, who just six years later, leads his team out every weekend as the game’s youngest skipper, confident that if they bring something close to their collective best, can beat any team on any given day.
When drawing comparisons on how he leads, it is with Test Captain Pat Cummins, my favourite leader in Australian sport. Noah Anderson, the 23-year-old captain of the Gold Coast Suns, possesses the same level of calm reflection and leadership presence that doesn't require shouting to be heard.
I have heard Pat Cummins speak about the "four horsemen of poor performance - stress, anger, clutter and chaos." For all the optimism surrounding the Gold Coast Suns, the real test comes when performance falls short of talent and expectations. That's when the horsemen appear: stress breeds defensiveness, anger fractures unity, clutter overwhelms priorities, and chaos dismantles systems. Riding together, they spawn something worse - blame, which attracts a crowd but offers no solutions.
And when it happens, remember the idea that sits at the heart of the Gold Coast Suns 'us story':
“Play your moments”.
Play on!
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