In April 2016, the Gold Coast SUNS made a decision not to bid for a license in the new women’s national competition after the club deemed itself not to be in a suitable position to throw its hat into the ring.

Brisbane was given the Queensland license for AFLW and halfway through its inaugural season, both the undefeated Lions women’s team and the competition as a whole have proved to be an overwhelming success.

New Gold Coast Chief Executive Mark Evans admits while there was always only going to be one women’s team in Queensland to begin with, the SUNS should ‘fight like hell’ to secure its own women’s team when there is sufficient state talent to support it.

“Having been at the AFL while the decision was being made, I think it was always likely it would just be the one team from Queensland and that the logical place to start that would be out of Brisbane,” Evans told reporters at SUNS headquarters on Tuesday morning.

“But we have to look forward to the talent in Queensland and if we can get the talent base up then we should fight like hell to make sure we get a women’s team here.”