The Gold Coast Suns and the Hawthorn Hawks will meet at Metricon Stadium on Sunday afternoon in Round 3 with both teams hoping to snare their first win of the 2017 AFL Season.
Gold Coast were tipped to win their Round 1 encounter with the Brisbane Lions but a slow start allowed the Lions to build a strong effort which, despite trying hard, they could not recover.
They were then blown away in Round 2 last week by the GWS Giants, ultimately getting slammed by a three-figures-margin, all the more embarrassing given it happened against their fellow expansion club.
Hawthorn too went into Round 1 as the favourites in their match against the Essendon Bombers but could not hold out for the win in what was an emotional night for the Dons.
They went up against the Adelaide Crows last week and again weren’t a bad team by any stretch but didn’t have the quality to come away with the points against a strong side.
They have recalled Brendan Whitecross and Kaiden Brand this week, while Grant Birchall is out with a broken jaw and Kade Stewart has been dropped.
The Suns have dropped Jack Leslie and Callum Ah Chee, and lost Ben Ainsworth to a quad injury, with Jarrod Harbrow, Brandon Matera and Brayden Fiorini the replacements.
A short history of Gold Coast and Hawthorn is that Hawthorn are better – they’ve got an 8-0 record against the Suns, and in fact Gold Coast have only once gotten within four goals of them.
The Hawks will not be happy with their performance over the first two weeks of the competition and as a proud team they are sure to come out firing.
It wouldn’t be a surprise to see them win by a big margin with that being the case. They’re $1.37 to win, by $3 for them to win by 40+ points looks like good value.