Gold Coast and Geelong have put on a show in Darwin with a historic first half in hot and humid conditions.
Teams battle to adapt to a slippery ball when they venture to the Northern Territory and the Suns proved that last week with a 5.12 first half against North Melbourne, who managed 2.5, but there were no such issues on Thursday night.
WATCH THE VIDEO ABOVE: Ben Long snaps brilliant goal in high-scoring first half.
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Gold Coast and the Cats played out Darwin’s highest-scoring first quarter since 2019 and that trend continued early in the second quarter when they went goal for goal early.
“Well driving here tonight I don’t think we thought we were going to see 69 points on the scoreboard in the first 35 minutes of game time,” Joel Selwood said in commentary for Channel 7.
The scoreboard kept ticking over after that, too, and it was all in Gold Coast’s favour.
The Suns kicked six in a row with the run topped off by local heroes Joel Jeffrey and Ben Long getting in on the action.
Long, a member of the famous family headlined by Essendon premiership hero Michael, defied the conditions to kick a brilliant snap that had his fans on their feet.
“A Long — how many times have they boomeranged on this ground?” Selwood asked Darwin product Shaun Burgoyne.
Burgoyne replied: “They’ve got partial ownership rights! There’s plenty of Longs up here, spent many junior days on this oval kicking goals.”
Half-time arrived with Gold Coast leading 11.5 to 6.2 — the final tally of 17 goals at the main break going down as the second most in Darwin history, only trailing 20 by the Bulldogs and Fremantle in 2007.
Suns captain Touk Miller said he felt the team had slightly adjusted to the conditions after last week.
“It’s never easy,” he said.
“I feel like our boys are going to survive pretty well in the second half, they already know what’s coming.”
Meanwhile, Burgoyne joked he had a role in Jeffrey’s first goal of the season.
“I actually saw him walking along the street today and said ‘are you going to kick me one or two?’” the four-time AFL premiership player said.
“He goes ‘but I’m playing in the backline!’ I said ‘just run off and create’ — and he did.”
The Suns went on to record their highest ever score with the 26.8 (164) to 15.10 (100) victory producing the most points in an AFL game since 2016.
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