IT WAS the third paragraph of Gold Coast’s media release on Tuesday which made us sit bolt upright.

“The Gold Coast Suns’ senior management, coaches and player leadership group unanimously supported the decision,” it read.

Harley Bennell, Brandon Matera and Trent McKenzie had been ruled unavailable for senior selection because they’d had a few alcoholic drinks on the weekend.

Suns dump trio for breaching alcohol rule

Wow. Only eight months earlier, senior management, coaches and the player leadership group had chosen to not look too deeply into former multi-million dollar player Karmichael Hunt’s heavy drugs activities, including whether he had any involvement with Suns teammates.

Talk about picking and choosing moments to make a statement.

Apparently, Bennell, Matera and McKenzie had “failed to live the standards agreed upon”. They also, the release told us, “acknowledged to the leadership group and senior coach that they failed to meet the standards outlined”.

In isolation, the decision by the Suns, who have won just one of five matches this season, to sanction the renowned party-going trio may have been viewed as admirable.

However this is a football club which has not only tolerated, but deliberately turned a blind eye to off-field behaviour of some of its players since it joined the AFL in 2011.

We wonder what standards were important to the Suns on September 1 last year when Hunt, as proven in a Queensland court, purchased an eight-ball of cocaine, which depending on how it is cut, equates to about 60 lines of cocaine.

September 1 was the day the Suns had their Mad Monday for 2014, and Hunt had happened to be in the presence of almost the entire Suns playing list.

We also wonder what standards may have been important to the Suns on September 8 last year. At 7.32am that day, and this, again, was proven in a Queensland court, Hunt bought another eight-ball of cocaine outside a pizza restaurant on the Gold Coast’s Mermaid Beach.

7.32 in the morning seems to be an interesting time to be buying drugs outside a pizza shop.

By late morning that day, and for the next two days, Hunt was in the company of a number of Sun players on a golf tour on the Sunshine Coast.

When The Footy Show in March this year revealed the links between Hunt’s drugs purchases and him being in the company on Suns players on several occasions neither the AFL nor Gold Coast would comment.

Now the Suns are making examples of three players who had a drink when they shouldn’t have, for failing to “meet standards.”

AFL.com.au is not suggesting any player took recreational drugs in the company of Hunt on those occasions but his ability to obtain drugs and and mingle effortlessly with listed players is alarming. 

Surely the club itself failed to “meet standards”, whatever they may be, when it chose to close its eyes on Hunt, and then hope all scrutiny would just go away.

In football and most certainly in life, you can’t pick and choose the moments to make statements.

There’s no turning back now for the Suns.

New coach Rodney Eade had no idea of the poor state of this club when he accepted the coaching role last year.

He may even have chosen to stay in the more personally stable domain of high-end football department administration, had he been privy to the myriad issues relating to poor behaviour and questionable standards of Suns players.

That he has overseen the decision to suspend Bennell, Matera and McKenzie at a time when his playing list is already smashed by injury or suspension, including to Gary Ablett, Jack Martin, Jaeger O’Meara, David Swallow and Steven May, says a lot.

We’re pretty sure Eade would have delved deeper into the impact Hunt might have had on this club, particularly the actions of early September last year.

Leadership at the Suns has long been an issue. Ablett leads by example on the field, but off it, he is not Joel Selwood or Luke Hodge.

Intriguingly, acting captain Michael Rischitelli had quotes attributed to him in the Suns’ press release which revealed the sanctions to Bennell, Matera and McKenzie.

Surely a captain, even when injured, should be the one making public statements, not the stand-in