In a year where wins were scarce, the growth made in areas such as development and leadership has been substantial. Call it the Rodney Eade effect. Call it the maturation of players. Call it whatever you like. The progress made by natural leaders, Tom Lynch and Steven May, this season ought to give Gold Coast tremendous confidence moving forward.
 
As the two key pillars in the SUNS spine, and as arguably the two most important players in Gold Coast’s side, the leadership growth made by the pair this year has been one of the major positives to come out of a season that reaped only four and a half wins.
 
Both Lynch and May finished inside the top three in last Friday night’s best and fairest count, with the key forward holding off second-year rebounding defender Kade Kolodjashnij by just two votes in a thriller.
 
When Eade landed in southern Queensland at the end of last October, the veteran coach immediately went to work improving the SUNS leadership. Due to the age profile of the list, it was the area of greatest concern. Training and professionalism standards needed to improve and the leaders had to drive these.
 
As the year progressed and players with leadership titles begun to fall victim to the unbelievable injury curse, Lynch grasped the responsibility to emerge as future captaincy material.
 
In the second half of the year, May followed suit, marshalling a back six that was under siege for most of the year due to the gulf in midfield personnel from week-to-week. He was demonstrative, inspiring and directive, like a soldier in the trenches, and regardless of the state of the game he performed his duty until the final siren.
 
In the aftermath of Gold Coast’s Club Champion, May told SUNS TV that an elevated focus on leadership was part of his natural evolution as a footballer and something he felt required to do with so many leaders out.
 
The key defender believes a silver lining of having Gary Ablett, David Swallow and Dion Prestia out was the need for others to fill the void, to step up and drive the club, both on and off field.
 
“Honestly it wasn’t something we sat down and said: ‘Hey, lets do it’. It’s on the field, Tom Lynch and myself, he’s up the forward, I’m up the back, we’ve realised we need to step up and lead the way because all our good leaders are injured and they’ve retired (in recent years),” May said.
 
“I suppose it was a natural thing that came, but obviously the coaches sat us down and said you two are at different ends of the field, you have a lot of influence on the blokes around you – you need to step up.
 
“That’s when I started to become more accountable for my own game and also the back six. I think it’s been a blessing in disguise.
 
“Hopefully I can help out the leaders next year and provide a little bit of leadership down back with Nick Malceski, Rory Thompson, and as you saw with Kade Kolodjashnij coming second, he’s going to have to step up his leadership again.”