His contract extension signed and sealed, Gold Coast head coach Stuart Dew is now focused on "getting the work done" at the AFL club.
Dew's stay at the Suns has been extended until the end of the 2022 season in a deal which was confirmed by the club on Wednesday.
While the dual premiership winner has only claimed 10 victories in his two-and-a-bit seasons at the Suns, both he and the club concede the start of his tenure was about resetting a playing list shorn of multiple talents such as foundation captain Gary Ablett, Tom Lynch, Steven May, Dion Prestia and Jaeger O'Meara.
Dew believes the next period of his reign will be about taking the team he's built into the Suns' first finals campaign and beyond.
"Our main goal to come in was obviously regenerate the list, reset the whole footy club and create the best environment where players can come in every day to improve," Dew said.
"It's taken two years to get to that point but now it's about getting the work done.
"It was a big reset, we knew we were going to be young and we probably accelerated that in a sense last year with a couple of trades but our choice to go to the draft in a strategic way we think was really important.
"We've got a good core group of players that we think at the end of this contract if we get our process right, then the rest should take care of itself."
Dew's extension was all but finalised earlier in the year but he and the club decided to delay an announcement until after the COVID-19 lockdown earlier in the year.
The 40-year-old said the delay was never likely to derail his intention to stay on with the Suns.
"We've worked really hard over the last three years to have that stability on field and obviously the last piece of that puzzle is a bit of off-field stuff as well," he said.
"I'm a piece of the puzzle and the players are obviously a really important piece and we've got a big commitment from basically the bulk of our playing list, which is important."
Australian Associated Press
