Gold Coast coach Damien Hardwick is on the search for who can play "September footy", and his players have three more games to prove they belong on the journey.
The Suns' finals hopes went up in smoke on Friday night after they suffered an upset 10-point loss to struggling West Coast in Perth.
The result left Gold Coast nursing a 9-11 record with just three more matches remaining, and extended their losing streak on the road to a club-record 16 matches.
Hardwick bemoaned the "fumbling and bumbling" performance by his players, and was particularly critical of his team losing the contested possession count 143-123.
"You've got to play the game a certain way," Hardwick said.
"You've got to make sure you have the consistency of performance and you've got to play a September brand of footy, and we didn't tonight.
"Our contest work, in fairness, the last couple of weeks it hasn't been to the level that we'd like.
"So we have to sit there and make decisions on players."
Hardwick conceded some of his players weren't up to scratch in key aspects of the game.
"I feel for everyone to be honest. It's not as if they're not trying," Hardwick said.
"Sometimes there's things that we've got to teach them and we've got to get them better at.
"But the fact the matter is, we're not getting it done.
"Sometimes it's one step back to go two steps forward. So we're going to make some tough calls about what that September brand looks like, and are we at that level at the moment?
"I don't deflect the fact that it's my job to get these guys up to speed. We've failed in that this year, and we're going to make sure we get better."
Even though finals are now out of the equation, Hardwick says the final three games - against Essendon, Melbourne and Richmond - are critical for the team's journey.
"Well it can be shattering (to miss out on finals) or the next three weeks could be defining for what it looks like moving forward," Hardwick said.
"Because this is an all too familiar tale to this football club, to our football club, and we've got to change it.
"So at the end of the day, our playing group, our coaches, our organisation has to stand up and say, 'Listen, let's get to work'.
"We've got three weeks to turn something around. We've never had a winning season.
"Our max wins are 10, so let's work towards something.
"We want to make sure we sit there and finish off the way we should finish the season off."
