At 0-4, some sections of the media have already stamped the Gold Coast SUNS' season as a failure. A month in, and already year over. Despite a nightmarish start to 2015, Dion Prestia says the playing group is united and although the consistency of effort has been unacceptable, change is on the way.
 
Last Saturday night’s clash with fellow expansion franchise Greater Western Sydney presented a great opportunity for Rodney Eade’s side to earn back some respect after raising the bar against Geelong a week earlier. But, in the most disappointing performance of the year, the SUNS departed Canberra with more questions than answers.
 
In the wake of the 66-point drubbing, Prestia revealed the playing group engaged in honest, forthright discussions to get to the bottom of the poor performances that have stained 2015 thus far.
 
“We talked a lot about this week just being united. It was pretty disappointing on the weekend, just our effort,” Prestia told reporters at Metricon Stadium on Tuesday.
 
“There was a lot of times where boys might have missed tackles, just maybe shirked the issue a little bit.
 
“We’ve gone though that as a leadership group, just as a playing group and we’ll see changes this week.”
 
The gulf in effort between round three and round four was enormous. Whilst skill execution and inaccuracy in front of goal hurt the SUNS against the Cats, the absence of effort was the decisive factor in Canberra.
 
Gold Coast key forward Tom Lynch admitted the side focused in the lead-up to the Giants game on bringing the same four-quarter effort they had in Geelong. The reason for its absence was still unclear when Lynch spoke to the media, although he did remain confident the SUNS would find it for QClash 9.
 
“Going into Geelong we focused on just bringing effort. We thought we did that; probably skills let us down in that game. We were conscious all week of bringing the same sort of effort,” Lynch said on Tuesday.
 
“We spoke about it at length before GWS and obviously for whatever reason, we didn’t bring it which was extremely disappointing.
 
“I think we’ll bounce back this week and get back in that area and have the whole 22 bringing that effort.”