Gold Coast forward/midfielder Ben Ainsworth believes the SUNS have all the processes in place to be able to contest for finals football in the future.

Speaking on SEN Evenings with Jack Heverin, Ainsworth said the brand of football the SUNS have developed in 2019 is the beginnings of a foundation the club can use to launch into finals contention in the coming years.

“We’d love to be a consistent four-quarter team every week and we’re obviously delivering that,” Ainsworth said. 

“But in 24 months time we want to be verging for the finals, not to say that can’t happen sooner.

“(We want) to be a consistent team that is well-respected throughout the competition.

“Hopefully that correlates through to the next couple of years.” 

The SUNS have certainly been far more competitive in 2019, with five of its eight games this season decided by less than a goal. 

The latest was Round 8 against Melbourne where the SUNS went down in agonising circumstances.

After the heartbreaking loss, Ainsworth said SUNS Senior Coach Stuart Dew offered great perspective to the group.

“He was really good, he was obviously disappointed like all of us were,” Ainsworth said.

“I think that’s the key message out of the tough loss was that we have to stick together as a group and we’re not far off them being wins. 

“Obviously we’ve been in that situation a lot this year so his key message was to stick together and we’ve just got to get belief out of that.” 

“It’s just looking forward to the next challenge ahead and hopefully we find ourselves in winning situations rather than on the other end like last week.”