THREE-TIME premiership coach Mick Malthouse has hit out at the AFL’s decision to place a team on the Gold Coast amid growing fears the Suns are adding to the region’s history of failed sporting teams.

Malthouse said a history of futile sporting endeavours on the Gold Coast, combined with a population that was not interested in AFL, meant the club was destined for disaster from the outset.

“The Gold Coast has never been a really great club land,” Malthouse said on SEN Breakfast.

“It’s failed in basketball, it’s failed in rugby and I think it’s failed in football.

“As a transitional society, outside of a handful of people it’s basically people on holidays, they have short stays there.”

Malthouse said it would have been more logical for the AFL to create teams in Cairns or Tasmania.

He suggested the team will struggle to keep its star players, as they would inevitably seek out opportunities in traditional AFL heartlands.

“It’s very difficult to control players,” Malthouse said.

“Players want to move back into the mainstream football (states). Don’t worry about free agency, their players will put their hand up and say, ‘We’ve got to move.’ It’s going to be damn tough for them.”

It emerged this morning that the Suns are set to hold a forum for members who are demanding answers to the club’s recent turmoil.

‘TEARS, ANGER AND BEWILDERMENT’

The Gold Coast Bulletin reported Suns CEO Andrew Travis, coach Rodney Eade and high performance manager Justin Cordy will front the fans on Tuesday at Metricon Stadium in the hope of easing the growing concerns.

Suns foundation member Dan Venter requested the forum via a passionate email to the club earlier this week, requesting the chance for he and other members to ask questions about the club’s turbulent season.

The Gold Coast are in the midst of a five-game losing streak, having started the year with three wins.

“It’s been a massive roller coaster ride as a Suns supporter since our beginning,” Venter told The Bulletin.

“I expected that but I just want to see consistent improvement each year.

“But copping 10-goal hidings at this stage of our development is just so painful to watch.

“It feels like we have gone backwards.

“I could see my fellow members feeling the same after games at Metricon. There were tears, anger and just general bewilderment.

“Supporters sitting there shaking their heads. I don’t want supporters to jump off the Suns wagon.

“I felt like I had to do something. I wanted the club to recognise our frustrations and do something.”

BROWN: ‘A REBUILD IS NECESSARY’

Former Sun Cambell Brown penned a column overnight, saying the club was in need of a rebuild.

Brown spent three years at the Suns after nine at Hawthorn, including winning a premiership in 2008.

“At the Hawks, I experienced first-hand how a club needs to be built to be successful. And then I went to the Gold Coast,” Brown wrote for The New Daily.

“The difference in environments was stark.

“When [Alastair Clarkson] took over at Hawthorn in 2005, he immediately moved to address training standards, tardiness and professionalism.

“These areas were not at a professional level when I was at the Gold Coast.

“You would expect that with such a young list, but with so many impressionable players, it was imperative that these standards were set right from the outset.

“They weren’t.”

Earlier this month, Gold Coast chairman Tony Cochrane slammed AFL icon and former Brisbane Lions coach Leigh Matthews for “short-sighted” claims that Queensland can’t support two teams. Matthews, who was initially sceptical when Gold Coast entered the competition in 2011, told the Seven Network he still believed there was not enough demand to warrant two AFL sides in south-east Queensland.

Cochrane said Matthews’ criticism lacked common sense and ignored the increase in both broadcast earnings and junior participation that the AFL’s frontier expansion efforts has generated.

“I can’t believe how often you have to defend yourself against your own in this sport, it’s quite interesting,” Cochrane said.

“The statement doesn’t look at the long-term view, it just looks at the immediate short term — we’re not winning enough games, how do we fix that, get rid of the other mob.

“Life’s a bit more complex than that.”

Cochrane said the AFL simply cannot afford to ignore the Gold Coast market, the sixth biggest in the country, and laughed off suggestions the Suns had cannibalised Brisbane’s support.

“Maybe in Melbourne you see a city that’s an hour apart as one marketplace. We see Brisbane as a completely different city and I think 600,000 Gold Coasters would support that statement,” he said.

“You can’t say all the potential people that could be fans or future footballers in that region — we’ll just leave you to the NRL.”

The Suns and Lions have struggled in recent years, both on and off the field, with recent crowds modest at the Gabba and Metricon Stadium.