FIVE and a half years from birth, the Gold Coast Suns are a $100 million embarrassment.

This was supposed to be said about Greater Western Sydney - AFL’s Vietnam, it was called - but there’s no mistake about which of the expansion clubs is thriving.

The Suns are bottom of the ladder, in crisis, and the cocaine scandal widened on Monday.

It’s easy to lay blame, but blame there is.

The players are at fault, all 12 of them according to sellout merchant Karmichael Hunt. He says they took part in several cocaine parties and named them all to the Queensland Crime and Corruption Commission.

The club is at fault, for it is responsible, with the players, for the culture embedded to support the players.

Former Suns chief executive Travis Auld is at fault, for he built the club from the ground up and was rewarded for his work with promotion to second-in-charge at AFL House.

Former chief executive Andrew Demetriou is at fault, for he recommended to the Commission that Hunt be paid $1 million a season to jump codes.

And the Commission is at fault, led by Mike Fitzpatrick, because the buck always stops with the coach.

The Commission wanted expansion. The Commission wanted southeast Queensland and not Tasmania. And the Commission wanted Karmichael Hunt.

media_camera Andrew Raines gets into a scuffle with Andrew Carrazzo.

They all have to accept a level of responsibility.

Demetriou’s legacy was severely tarnished by the events involving Essendon in his last 12 months and now comes the Hunt debacle.

Demetriou is gone and he can’t comment, but cast your mind back to when Hunt signed with the Gold Coast and Demetriou was cock-a-hoop.

Indeed, Demetriou had Hunt and his girlfriend to his Toorak home in May, 2009, to enjoy a cup of tea and Demetriou charmed their pants off, so to speak.

Hunt would announce he joined the Suns a month later.

Hunt would later tell the QCCC, he started experimenting with drugs around that time.

Demetriou loved the coup. He was able to convince a rugby superstar to join a start-up AFL organisation and that hurt rugby league.

Just months before Hunt and his Suns teammates went on a post-season bender, Demetriou hoped Hunt would remain a Sun in 2015.

“Karmichael Hunt has been a great ambassador for our game and helped this club put its name on the map,’’ Demetriou said.

“I hope he sticks with the AFL because he is great for the game.”

All the while, Hunt was treating the game and those employed him with contempt.

Fitzpatrick, who is overseas, needs urgent answers. As chairman, he has overseen the commitment of $100 million to the Suns and it’s been reported clubs are increasingly concerned with the money spent. On top of that comes the cocaine scandal.

Fitzpatrick needs answers because clubs will ask questions.

In the past four years, Fitzpatrick has, in his own curious way, dealt with Melbourne tanking (deals done), the Adelaide salary cap cheating (deals done), the ongoing Essendon saga (deals done) and now has a cocaine scandal ahead of him.

Don’t worry about Demetriou, Fitzpatrick’s legacy isn’t what it was, either.