MELBOURNE 1.3 Â 6.6 Â 7.10 Â 9.12 (66)
GOLD COAST 3.3 Â 4.6 Â 6.8 Â 9.10 (64)
Goals: Melbourne: A vandenBerg 3 J Watts 3 C Dawes C Petracca D Kent. Gold Coast: B Matera 2 J Garlett 2 T Lynch 2 J Grant M Shaw N Malceski.
Best: Melbourne: Watts, Gawn, Tyson, Petracca, Jones, Vandenberg, N Jetta, O McDonald, T McDonald, Brayshaw. Gold Coast: Miller, Lynch, Sexton, Harbrow, Kolodjashnij, Rosa, Matera.
Umpires: Dean Margetts, Leigh Fisher, Robert O'Gorman.
Official Crowd: 20,627 at MCG.
Melbourne could and should have expected themselves to win, and win fairly well. And for much of Sunday afternoon they perhaps were doing just that – expecting to win.
In the end Tom Lynch had a chance to win it for Gold Coast after the siren, but couldn't score, so the the Demons came away with a two-point victory.
The end was better than the beginning, just. Christian Petracca played with some power and pace. Dom Tyson fought for the ball. Billy Stretch ran and ran.Â
Max Gawn had 60 hit-outs – an incredible 51 more than the next-best ruckman. Nathan Jones got involved and Jack Watts was one of a handful of players to look like he really, really, really wanted to win.
The Demons had to kick a goal in the last two minutes of the match to make sure they triumphed in a game that had looked gone after two brilliant Gold Coast goals halfway through the last term.
They needed to take a mark in the defensive goal square with 44 seconds left to make doubly sure, and then survive Lynch's boundary shot from the point of the 50-metre line after the final siren.
The Demons did all of that, just, with Watts to thank for parts one and two. They won for the eighth time this year, meaning they have already passed last year's mark with four games still to play.
But this was hard, hard – at times cover-your-eyes agonising – work.
First the Dees had to outlast some more than spirited opposition from a team missing almost all their first-choice midfield, but wanting their season to end in a much better way than most of it had gone.
Then they had to deal with their own long list of issues.
Gold Coast were diligent, direct, at times brilliant and above all else persistent: they were in this match from start to finish, they dominated it for parts, and should probably have won it.
Melbourne had more of the ball early but were scrappier than the Suns when they got it to boot. Gold Coast were ready to go but their indecision and flat-footedness caused issues too.
In one promising sign, the Demons were winning more hit-outs thanks to Gawn, if struggling to get the ball out of the middle before the Suns could: clearances were seven to six for the first term.
The bigger problem was that they had more of other things: dodgy kick-ins, fumbles at ground level, defenders competing with each other in the air, only for the ball to fly past both of them.
At stages, they got the ball only to run straight into a tackler. They finished with 19 marks inside 50 to Gold Coast's 10.
The Suns competed, relentlessly, and knew how to find what was waiting on the other side for them. Their three key forwards stayed well out of each other's way and played a large part in their early lead.
Tom Lynch, Peter Wright and Sam Day all created plenty of room for each other – Wright took his two first-term marks on the wing – and the other two won some one-on-one contests with ease.
They made it to three goals to none via the busy Touk Miller, a gutsy Jarrod Garlett mark, and Jarrod Harbrow's drive from defence.
Ryan Davis threw himself at the ball, Alex Sexton and Matt Rosa covered ground and they could perhaps have worked their way to a bigger lead before the Demons made a start.
One of Melbourne's last pieces of play for the quarter was clearly their best, if keeping with the heart-in-mouth theme.
Stretch's kick to Watts at the top of the goal square, where he stood waving both arms madly in the air, arrived a split-second before two hard-sprinting Suns.
Watts scored again at the start of the second quarter, this time from a little further out, but it took a while for the Demons' improving endeavour to push them a little more safely clear.
Four goals in the last three minutes (interrupted by a Lynch set shot) did it for them in the end, two brilliant Petracca passes setting up shots for Chris Dawes and then Dean Kent.
The first looked lucky at first glance, but anything but on the replay, Petracca's 40-metre pass taking a second to travel to the exact spot that Dawes needed it.
The second he kicked across his body, spotting Kent out the corner of his eye while still bursting out of the centre square with power and at full pace.
Aaron vandenBerg kicked the Dees' other two goals in that patch, leaving them two goals clear at half-time and finally starting to play with some predictability in their front half.
A Brandon Matera snap not long into the second quarter indicated the Suns' willingness to hang in there, and make up for those three minutes, which prompted two questions:Â could they? And, would this, finally, cause the Demons to shake off their last bit of lethargy?
It took a little longer. Sexton marked unopposed in front of goal, with none of the four Demons close enough to get to him taking responsibility for him.
He missed his shot, but there was more: Melbourne were lucky they didn't have to pay when Lynch intercepted a sideways pass on the Dees' 50-metre line, and the Suns ran it to the other end.
They were less fortunate when Matt Shaw's 55-metre shot made it through, levelling the scores as the Suns again started to keep the ball in their half and force some mistakes.
There was opportunity for some late respite again, but Watts missed and then Bernie Vince missed, Melbourne posting their first goal for the term after the siren, through Hogan.
Petracca's first goal pushed the lead back out past two goals. But Garlett's brilliant snap kept his team in it, and the Suns kept finding space that was impossible for Melbourne's defenders to clog up any better than they did.
Matera needed only a metre to soccer Gold Coast to within two points halfway through, four players having fallen over in the goal square just as he came bouncing through.
So did Jarrad Grant, whose miraculous tumbling snap from the boundary line saw them take a lead Lynch, kicking from more than 50 metres out, came close to snatching back right at the end.