“Football is a brutal industry. Often the barest of margins separates those who make the grade, and those who don’t. It may be the tiniest fraction of a second over a ten metre sprint. Maybe it’s a centimetres’ worth of vertical leap. Maybe it’s the unpredictable bounce of a ball, or the fact that a club needed a talented X, and you are a talented Y. And now that our season has ended, so too will the AFL aspirations of a number on our list. They will be disappointed, and understandably so. This is a game built on passion, and for many, this moment will seem like a significant disruption in the pursuit of a lifelong dream. These players have worked extremely hard all year, and but for a moment here or a physical quirk there, they will miss out.”

So said Gold Coast SUNS CEO Travis Auld at the club’s Best and Fairest presentation a few weeks back.

It’s a cruel reality of modern football that extremely talented people often miss out.

It’s no different at the GC SUNS.

With the core talent of its 2010 list made up of contracted 17 year-olds, strategically selected older campaigners and a supplementary fleet of predominantly Queensland-raised top up talent, something has to give as the draft picks and uncontracted AFL player signings start filling slots of the 2011 player roster.

But according to GC SUNS Football Manager Marcus Ashcroft, the journey won’t necessarily end for players who don’t win a 2011 GC SUNS contract.

And in an era when mature rookies like Fremantle’s Michael Barlow and Gold Coast SUNS’ very own Daniel Harris have paved the way for future late bloomers and ‘second chancers’, he’s got a point.

“If they don’t get picked up in the draft then they may be chance of going in rookie draft and if that doesn’t happen they’ll still be part of the Queensland development program.”

Some may well find their way back to the GC SUNS as one of the club’s thirteen National Draft selections or as rookies.

But what of the rest?

“The guys who don’t get a run, they’ll probably go to the ‘state combine’ which is for draft prospects who don’t get a go first time around. They have a screening where all the scouts come in and interview players and do a series of fitness tests. It’s a chance for those guys to be exposed to AFL clubs. So all the guys who missed out will go to that. They then become a chance of being picked up later on.”

Ashcroft said it’s tough work telling players they won’t be around the following year.

“It’s never easy. They’ve worked pretty hard all year. Some would consider themselves pretty stiff.”

But as some doors swing shut, others blow open.

With a steady stream of uncontracted player signing announcements making the sports pages the nation over, there’s plenty of work going on behind the scenes.

It’s easy to forget that signing up an uncontracted player (or a new coach or trainer for that matter) means signing up a family. Nearly all of the GC SUNS’ signings will come from interstate, many will have kids who need schooling and, in nearly every instance, partners who want to continue on with their working careers. Accommodation needs to be found. Newcomers need to be plugged in to fresh social networks.

“It’s the club’s responsibility to help relocate the players and their families,” Ashcroft says. “There’s a formal induction process for players and their families, of course. But we go beyond that. We help people find a place to live, whether they’re renting or buying. We help find them jobs. For instance we just helped [new assistant coach] Dean Solomon’s partner find a job in real estate. There’s plenty of ways we can help make the transition a smooth one.”

And when the National Draft takes place in November, Ashcroft says a new induction regimen will kick in.

“We’ll have a large intake of younger guys with a whole range of different needs. Some will need help getting organised so they can get into university or they might need a hand starting up some other tertiary training. Some we will set up in an AFL Apprenticeship. We have a big responsibility to make all our newcomers feel at home. We take our role very seriously in that regard.”