General Manager of football operations Marcus Ashcroft has suggested the Gold Coast SUNS would welcome elite young athletes from rival codes and sports in the future, however their immediate focus is on developing their current crop of elite young players.

“We are interested to make our club accessible to all different types of athletes, obviously with Karmichael Hunt coming in as an international athlete who played a different sport, Rugby League and Rugby Union and has made the transition extremely well, unfortunately we are not in a position to bring those type of athletes on in the next year, our list is reducing from 46 to 42 for 2013 and from 14 and 15 our list will come down a further four spots.”

The comment comes after talented NFL teenagers Quinn Porter and Derrell Acrey joined the GC SUNS 2XU High Performance Camp in Arizona after catching the eye of an American based AFL talent scout.

“Both of these boys were involved in an international Draft combine which is conducted every year over in the US and their agent contacted Scott Clayton our List Manager looking for an opportunity to come and train with our guys, they are both very keen to get into the AFL and I think from us being over here it was a chance they could drive from LA which they did last night drove seven hours to come and be with us today.”

“A really good opportunity for them to come up here and join in and see where they stack up against our lads in skill work and conditioning work and it also broke the camp up with a bit of fun from our boys point of view."

Despite excelling in the highly explosive and power based NFL, both Derrell and Quin found the highly skilled AFL environment and kicking, completely foreign.

“I went out there, gave my all, hand balled it correctly and kicked it correctly,’ said Quinn.

While Quinn Porter an extremely quick running back excelled in regards to strength and power, but found the combination of running and kicking on the fly, difficult to master.

“It’s something you have to get used to, as I get used to it standing here and as soon as I start running it’s a whole different thing and then my toes, it’s hard to get my toes down as we are so used to being cocked up as sprinters.”

With the continued success of GC SUNS star Karmichael Hunt in transitioning from the NRL and French Rugby Union to AFL, Ashcroft was hopeful the Gold Coasters would again look further afield for elite talent in the future, however conceded the Clubs sole focus in 2013 is taking the next steps as individuals and as a playing group, and pursuing high performance with greater consistency.

“Our strategy has always been to develop our elite young talent, we have also been able to balance it out by recruiting mature age talent in Greg Broughton and Tom Murphy and we go into the pre season draft with potential to pick up someone else, so we are not saying never, because I think going forward we would love to be a club that is accessible to all kinds of athletes, but at the moment we are into developing our elite young talent and balancing it up with a mature age talent that has played some quality football in the AFL.”

While the visit by the NFL players provided a welcome distraction, there was still plenty of time left in the day for the Gold Coast SUNS players to get through their required workload with Ashcroft saying they are now being tested as much mentally as they are physically.

“We are deep into the second week of our training camp here in Flagstaff, the boys are starting to get a little bit fatigued as you would expect both mentally and physically as you would expect.”