Gold Coast SUNS chairman Tony Cochrane has confirmed Gold Coast’s interest in taking Australian Rules football to China for premiership points next season.

Following Port Adelaide’s announcement last week that a memorandum of understanding was signed between the Power, their new partner Shanghai Cred Real Estate and the AFL to play a premiership season game in China in 2017, Cochrane revealed the SUNS were interested in being the opposition team in what will be a historic venture.

“Firstly, the Port Adelaide chairman’s done an exceptional job of creating this opportunity,” Cochrane told SUNS TV on Thursday afternoon.

“From our point of view, we’ve been in discussions with Port Adelaide and the AFL now for the last month.”

The Australian this morning reported the AFL Commission approved the SUNS as Port Adelaide’s opponent at its meeting in Melbourne earlier in the week.

With Southeast Queensland already a hub for a booming Chinese tourism industry, the SUNS are a ‘logical fit’ to participate in the proposed game in Shanghai.

“The Gold Coast has tremendous ties to China,” Cochrane said.

“Not only in terms of tourism but with billons of dollars worth of Chinese money being poured into the Gold Coast community in terms of new facilities and new hotels and other investment opportunities, so it just makes a really good, logical fit that it should be the Gold Coast SUNS.

“I said before we’re going to be a really aspirational club. We’re going to do new things; we’re going to try new things.

“You don’t make a great omelette without breaking eggs.

“So we’re going to break a few eggs, we’re going to try some new frontiers and we’re going to get out there and really be proud of what the Gold Coast Football Club can achieve and we’ll be pushing as hard as we can to try and get the China game up and make it as bigger success as we humanly can.”