SUNS Senior Coach Stuart Dew has spoken this year about the club’s desire to be a consistent football team, which wasn’t displayed on Sunday afternoon after the match against Essendon.

Speaking post-match, Dew said the team needed a weight of numbers contributing each week to provide a contest, which was the difference between the win against Carlton last week and loss against Essendon on the weekend.

“I think we want to be a consistent footy club and today again show that we're not, it was a bit of an immature performance we feel,” Dew said post-match.

“Our leaders stood up once again, Touk (Miller), Dave (Swallow) gives everything and Sam Collins was fantastic.

So I guess that's the benchmark, last week we had weight of numbers and then this week we left it to too few and the leaders were obviously beacons in that area.”

The SUNS have been vastly improved in the second half of the season this year and arrested a trend of dropping away in seasons, but Dew said the team still needed to finish on a positive.

With one match remaining against finals-bound Sydney, Dew said it was a perfect audition for his team to handle the pressure of finishing the regular season firing.

“We want to finish the season with momentum and that was as far back as 10 weeks ago,” Dew said.

“We've had some good wins and some poor losses so I guess that highlights our need to finish the season strong to springboard.

“We spoke just then with the players around how we want to be in a position that come Round 23 in the not too distant future that we're looking at a finals game the week after.

“So it's good practice because we're about the play a footy club that values that contest, plays finals-like footy and are in good form.

“We don't want to shy away from the challenge that's ahead of us and actually look forward to carrying that responsibility and I think that's going to be our message all week.”