From wooden spoon to the top four: Shaw and his Suns can now see the light

Rhyce Shaw was born to play football.

He grew up loving it. His father played for Collingwood. His uncle Tony is a club legend. It was inevitable he’d play for the same team.

“Playing with my little brother [Heath] at the Pies was amazing. And with my best mates, Benny Johnson, Swanny [Dane Swan] and Dids [Alan Didak] … then my time at Sydney; that changed my life. It was an amazing experience. And to cap it off with a premiership, that was the highlight of my footy career,” he said.

But when he moved from playing to coaching ranks, football began to turn sour for Shaw.

He joined North Melbourne as an assistant coach in 2019 and was thrust into the interim coaching position when Brad Scott and the struggling club parted ways mid-season.

In 2020, he was handed the gig full-time. It was the COVID-affected season. Teams moved into hubs. At North, the losses mounted, and at the end of the season, Shaw took time away from the role for personal reasons. He never returned.

“I’d just been in AFL my whole life. I thought that would be it. Once I left North, I didn’t want to be involved in footy.” he said.

But while Shaw may have left football, it never left him. His best mate, Stuart Dew, was then coach of the Gold Coast men’s team, and he kept on Shaw’s case, telling him to come up to Queensland.

“[He] kept ringing me and I kept saying ‘no, no, no’,” Shaw said.

Eventually, Shaw relented and moved his young family to the Gold Coast. Even then, his love for football didn’t return immediately.

“To be honest, I didn’t love it. But I knew that was what I was good at,” he said.

He took up a position coaching girls in the Suns’ academy, and over time, the father of three boys slowly rediscovered his love for the game.

So last year, when the club realised it needed to invest in its struggling women’s program, Shaw stepped back into the spotlight and the coaches’ box. How he speaks about football now makes it clear how rejuvenated he is as a coach.

“The women have taught me more in 12 months than I’d learnt in 10 years. I’ve learnt a lot of patience. It’s helped me think about the game a lot more, and I think the girls have driven me to be better for that,” he said.

While other AFLW teams might think simply changing a coach will change their results, Gold Coast knew a complete overhaul was needed. And so they invested. Heavily.

“It started with the phone call to Erin Phillips. That’s No.1. She’s been unbelievable for our program (as general manager of women’s football) in terms of her experience, her ability to see the game from a different perspective, her elite life that she’s lived over the last 20 years,” Shaw said.

Phillips brought head of high performance Anthony Gallomarino from Port Adelaide, while physio Angela Flack joined from the Australian women’s rugby league team. Three of the assistant coaches are former AFL players: Hugh Greenwood, Sam Isles and Rory Thompson.

“We’ve revamped the whole program, we’ve made some really tough decisions, we want to be the best AFLW program in the competition,” Shaw said.

The results are evident on the field: Gold Coast are young, fun and full of guns. At the risk of sounding like Jane Bunn, get ready Melbourne – here come the Suns.

It’s been an extraordinary turnaround. One win in 2024. Two wins and the wooden spoon last year. But this season, they’ve rocketed up the ladder and are eyeing a top-four finish.

Part of this resurgence are “the Great Eight” from the Suns’ controversial academy: highly talented, elite teenage athletes from the local area who have been coached at Carrara since they were 13 years old. All were taken in last year’s draft and they’re the envy of other clubs, from key forward Havana Harris, to smooth-moving Ava Usher and the skilful Sunny Lappin, daughter of former Carlton and St Kilda player Matthew.

“They’ve played at Burly [Burleigh Bombers], Broady [Broadbeach Cats], Palmy [Palm Beach Currumbin] and Southport. Then the academy has proved that step in between,” Shaw said.

“We don’t have the genuine pathways that the other teams have and that’s where the academy system works. I know everyone complains about it. If we didn’t have the academy system, they’d be lost to rugby or basketball or surf lifesaving.”

The Suns’ AFLW team has now won six games in a row – something the men’s team is yet to do. A fortnight ago, they beat their crosstown rivals the Brisbane Lions for the first time. Shaw was mobbed by the players after the game, the coach wearing a look of shock and awe.

“The marker for us is the [arch] enemy, and to beat them on their home deck, to see the girls do their thing and do it to a level that they hadn’t been before, it was just a great moment. The bus ride home was very interesting. It was something I’ve never experienced before in my life, but it was very cool!”

He says the difference between coaching the North Melbourne men’s team and Gold Coast’s women’s team is unified leadership.

“Just making sure everyone is on the same page, from high performance, medical, coaches and admin. I’ve seen the downfall of that firsthand in the men’s program. I don’t want to boast, but I’m really proud of how we operate in that space.”

While the men’s game gave him his career highlight on the field, the women’s program has provided his career highlight off it.

“The most rewarding time has been over the last two years … I come to work each day knowing that I’ve a group of people – players and staff – that want be the best and have fun doing it. I just love it.”

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