By Michael Whiting

SUNS assistant coach Ken Hinkley is expecting St Kilda to bounce back strongly following criticism of its first round loss against Port Adelaide when they host Gold Coast at Etihad Stadium on Sunday.

The 2009 and 2010 runners-up were out of the blocks slowly under new coach Scott Watters last week, losing to last year's 16th-placed Power by four points.

Gold Coast has its own problems after suffering a 69-point mauling from Adelaide, and expected no favours from the Saints.

"St Kilda are a great group, they'll bounce back, no doubt about that," Hinkley said.

"You know when the pressure is turned up on a side at stages and they get questioned about some of their better players, they'll respond.

"You look at them and say they were a little bit down on what they'd like to do but we don't give enough credit to Port Adelaide.

"Their intensity and effort was first class."

The SUNS have reacted to their first round loss by making three changes, although two are forced with Seb Tape (teeth) and Daniel Gorringe (Achilles) joining Sam Iles on the sidelines.

Trent McKenzie makes his return from a knee injury, while rugged midfielder Alex Sexton is set to make his debut after being named on an extended interchange bench.

Hinkley said he was confident Gold Coast had the rightmethod, but just had to be patient.

"The best thing is if you have patience and work to something you have to hang on and ride it out a bit sometimes," he said.

"We have great method here and great structures but wejust haven't, at the moment, got the ability to complete it for long periods of the game.

"We are a really well prepared AFL side, we just need to have patience and understand we will take time but we will get better.

"We're a young group so we have a lot of areas we haveto get better at and defensively we'd like to be better, offensively we'd like to be better and clearly around the stoppages after last week at the start of the game we need to be better."