With four losses, a draw that should have been a win, and just a single victory to its name so far in its debut VFL season the question arises - ‘so how do we know we’re improving’?

At Gold Coast Football Club, the answer is found in the way it makes the little things matter most.

After GCFC’s loss to Casey Scorpions a few weeks back, Nathan Ablett - arguably his club’s most potent offensive weapon – had kicked just one goal but still made the post match ‘best’ list.

Many who follow the club’s fortunes on the GCFC forum or on Twitter and Facebook weren’t backward in coming forward about their feelings as to whether Ablett was a worthy inclusion.

Equally, just last weekend many were caught off guard by Luke Russell’s absence from the best on ground votes after what appeared to be something of a blinder against Geelong. On the other hand, the relatively understated efforts of Roland Ah Chee and Daniel Harris received all the plaudits.

So what’s the story?

Fact is there’s a method in play, one designed to reward the kind of effort the county’s most talented young footballers have through no fault of their own probably grown up avoiding altogether.

GCFC Senior Coach Guy McKenna explains:

“The young kids on our list have all been big kingpins in their home states, really big fish in very small ponds, and because of their talent they’ve been able to get away with playing what I call ‘see the ball, chase the ball’.

But here you’ve got, for example, David Swallow playing alongside Mav Weller and Daniel Harris. Their simultaneous instincts are going to be telling them to go at the ball. But if they all do that they’re going to butt heads and have a three-way car accident. So it becomes a case of knowing your role intimately and playing it to the letter.

“Similarly their understanding of defence was to have the ball in their hands. It may sound silly, but in their pre-Gold Coast days, the best form of defence for these guys was to keep possession of the ball and to attack. They didn’t have to defend in the way we now understand and require - pushing back the other way, or blocking, or making space for a teammate.

From here on he says it’s a question of refinement – of instilling the kinds of playing behaviours that not only win games more often than not, but also allow his side to give itself the best possible chance week in week out in the oppressively demanding AFL competition.

“[Of the players on GCFC’s list] we all know they’ll be able to jump high, catch a ball and kick a goal. That’s why they’re here, because we know they can do all those things better than most. But now they need to understand that there’s significantly more expected of them. Now they learn that they simply have to be able lay a tackle when they’re so tired they think they’re going to cough up a lung, or smother a kick when they’ve got nothing left in the tank.”

To help the players keep track of their on field development, McKenna has put in place a system that measures the sorts of things the players need to prioritise - blocks, smothers, running back with the flight of the ball, tackles that bring players to the ground, chases that pressure an opponent.

“We call them ‘Desire Indicators’, or DI’s,” he says.

McKenna says having the need for high DI’s firmly lodged is his player’s minds each week will help develop a team-first ethic and a deeper understanding of what it takes to succeed at the highest level.

“I think it was David Parkin who once wrote about a midfield player who back in the eighties who before rotations had 29 possessions and kicked a couple of goals. In the context of the era it would have been considered something of a day out. It was recorded that over the course of the game he had the ball in his hands for two minutes and twenty seconds, but a game goes for 120 minutes. So Parkin asked ‘what was he doing the rest of the time?’

McKenna uses Daniel Harris’ recent game against Bendigo Bombers as an example of what the GCFC coaching staff deems important.

“Harro didn’t really have the kind of game he’d probably ring his folks up about, and in fact he probably came off the ground thinking his performance was less than what it could have been because he didn’t have the ball in his hands much. But he led the DI count and that means he contributed. He slowed the opposition down when he could, he did the kind of body on body things that create space for team mates, and he tackled hard. These are the things we like to see.”

DI’s are weighted to an extent – a ground tackle, for instance, is worth more than a block – but the coaching staff also line up similar types of players so that their particular kinds of DI’s can be measured like-for-like. Forwards are compared to forwards, backs with backs, and midfielders with midfielders. Naturally enough, DI’s are charted each week and McKenna says he is pleased to be witnessing an upward trend. At the end of the season, the GCFC Ironman Award will go to the player with the highest average DI count.

So back to that Nathan Ablett ‘best on ground’ issue.

“His defensive work was great,” McKenna said at the time. “He set up our first goal. He harassed the opponent twice with two great tackles, they turned the ball over and we scored out of that. Nathan led to the right space but even if we often kicked it to the left space. His offensive work rate’s picking up because of his defensive efforts, too.”

In other words he was busting a gut even if the goals had eluded him.

Lots and lots of little things that mattered.

And, at least as far as Guy McKenna is concerned, from all those little things big things will grow.