Melbourne have held out a charging Gold Coast Suns to win a thrilling game at Heritage Bank stadium, with Darcy Macpherson missing a chance to level the scores with 20 seconds remaining.
It was a fierce and often ill-tempered contest, with skirmishes breaking out frequently, Suns defender Charlie Ballard carried off late with a neck injury, and finished with the umpires being booed from the ground by a fully engaged home crowd. Ballard will undergo a precautionary scan, but the club was confident he’d be okay.
The Suns were missing their best player in Touk Miller, one of their best kicks in Lachie Weller, and important small forwards Ben Ainsworth and Nick Holman. Yet by half-time they held a decisive advantage at ground level, in both clearances and contested possessions.
That was against Melbourne’s vaunted midfield of Christian Petracca, Clayton Oliver and Jack Viney. Matt Rowell had five clearances to his name by quarter-time, and Noah Anderson continued his steady rise into the elite bracket of AFL midfielders.
But it was in the air that Melbourne had the ascendancy. Suns captain Jarrod Witts was a match for Max Gawn and Brodie Grundy at stoppages, but it was when the gun Demons rucks went forward that the real damage was done.
That is exactly why Grundy was recruited from Collingwood. By half-time the pair had three goals between them, and were clearly on the lookout for each other. Otherwise, the Dees had a wider spread of contributors, with seven goalkickers to half-time.
The last of them, to Alex Neal-Bullen with just seconds on the clock, took some air from the Suns’ tyres as they kept up the challenge, maintaining a seven-point margin at the main change, and Kysaiah Pickett’s second within a minute of the restart extended it.
The Suns, though, weren’t going down without a big fight. Ben King got lucky: held to barely a touch by Steven May, he took full advantage of two free kicks, the second of them on the stroke of three-quarter time to tie things up.
Kysaiah Pickett of the Demons celebrates a goal. Credit: Russell Freeman, Getty Images
It took a freakish effort by Petracca to break the deadlock, poaching the ball off a stoppage and hooking through a snap from nearly 40 metres off a step. A free kick against Levi Casboult 100 metres off the ball gifted another to Gawn.
That should have sunk the Suns, but they came again, Anderson capping a best-on-ground performance with a goal to drag them back, and Rosas’ fourth made the Demons fight to the wire to save the game.
Gold Coast Suns 3.3 7.4 11.6 13.7 (85)
Melbourne 4.4 8.5 11.6 13.12 (90)
Goals
Gold Coast Suns: Rosas 4, Chol 2, Casboult 2, King 2, Lukosius, Ellis, Anderson.
Melbourne: Grundy 2, Pickett 2, Gawn 2, van Rooyen, Chandler, Jordon, Neal-Bullen, Bowey, Sparrow, Petracca.
Best
Gold Coast Suns: Anderson, MacPherson, Powell, Ballard, Swallow, Rowell.
Melbourne: Gawn, Petracca, Brayshaw, Oliver, Pickett, May.
Injuries
Gold Coast Suns: Ballard (concussion).
Melbourne: Nil.
Umpires: Rebeschini Mollison Wallace Strybos.
Crowd: 11,440 at Heritage Bank stadium.
