If you attended the SUNS round 1 clash with Melbourne, you would know that Sarah Perkins snagged two goals, Jamie Stanton finished with 18 touches and unfortunately, the SUNS went down by 21 points. But here are some stats you might not know and what they mean for the club.

13 players on the SUNS list have played less than 10 AFLW games. “The amount of players that would be under ten games of AFLW footy would be enormous so we’ve just got to keep putting games in them and trust in them,” SUNS AFLW coach David Lake said after the round one loss to the Demons.

It is more than half the team, with defenders Lauren Ahrens, Jade Pregelj and Serene Watson, midfielders Kate Surman, co-captain Hannah Dunn, and Cheyenne Hammond, and forwards Dee Heslop and 2020 leading goal kicker Kalinda Howarth, along with the Suns five AFLW debutants yet to hit double figures of games played at the highest level.

 Six bone crunching tackles from rugby sevens converts Maddi Levi and Daisy D’Arcy, while fellow rugby sevens convert Lucy Single had three. The debutants certainly made their presence felt as their rugby backgrounds shone through.

 27 seconds it took for 2020 SUNS Club Champion winner Jamie Stanton to put the SUNS on the board in 2021 and what a goal it was.

Nine first-quarter disposals for SUNS debutant Bess Keaney, leading all comers as the Suns led by seven points at quarter time. Keaney also set up the first goal of the game with a quickfire handpass to Jamie Stantion. It was an impressive start for Keaney, debuting at 29 years of age.

Seven club or league debutants – a third of the team played their first game for the SUNS. Annise Bradfield, Bess Keaney, Lucy Single, Daisy D’Arcy and Maddi Levi played their first ever games while Alison Drennan and Sarah Perkins played their first games in red and gold. The super-seven made for an equal league-high with the West Coast Eagles.

Just one quarter was lost by the SUNS. A strong start saw the AFLW side leading by seven points at the first change, while also winning the third quarter by one point and equalling the Demons in the last quarter, which saw just one behind kicked from each side.

The stat shows how vital the “15 minutes of a lapse of concentration” was which SUNS coach David Lake said cost the team dearly in the second quarter. 

Two goals to forward Sarah Perkins puts her in equal 14^th on the all-time AFLW goal-kickers table. While Perkins has kicked tallies of just three goals, one goal and one goal in the past three seasons, her two goal start to the year shows she could be back to her premiership season form from 2017, where she kicked 11 goals – the second most in the league.