Saturday’s derbies will serve as the latest reminder of the increasingly-wide chasm between the AFL’s expansion clubs.

GWS host Sydney at 4.35pm in what shapes as the game of the round. An expected sell-out Spotless Stadium crowd and every finals contender will watch with interest.

Gold Coast and Brisbane then play for pride at Metricon Stadium. The attendance figure is likely to be half of that in Sydney; the Suns’ membership is also less than half of the Giants’ 25,243.

It’s been another season of on-field and off-field woes for Gold Coast. They are yet to contest a final and won’t for some time based on recent evidence.

Tom Lynch is leaving, marking the second straight year a captain has walked out. The Suns’ victory over Sydney, the greatest upset of the modern era, is their only win since round five.

In sharp contrast, GWS have won nine of their past 10 games.

The Giants, who fell one victory short of reaching a maiden grand final in 2016 and 2017, are now widely considered one of the greatest threats to a Richmond dynasty.

Gold Coast’s first AFL season was 2011. The Giants joined the competition a year later but have now lapped their fellow start-ups in almost every measure.

Both were given similar concessions. It begs the question, what has gone so horribly wrong and relatively right?

It’s contentious and subjective but superior drafting, development, list management, stability, staff and facilities have contributed.

Inaugural Gold Coast coach Guy McKenna, who re-signed in 2014 then was sacked later that year, believes the first fork in the road came when the Suns were more concept than club.

McKenna tried to recruit Neil Balme and Simon Lloyd, highly-respected football managers now at Richmond and Geelong respectively.

“I was a first-year coach. We had a first-time CEO and first-time footy manager. It was just too many firsts at a start-up club in a non-AFL state,” McKenna told AAP.

“I hate to be proven right but gee, Neil would have been good.

“A lot of money has been thrown at Gold Coast and GWS but maybe an extra 100,000 back then could have solved a few issues.”

McKenna also recalls “banging heads” with list manager Scott Clayton over a desire for more senior players in 2014, when the Suns were on track to reach the finals before Gary Ablett’s season-ending shoulder injury.

McKenna, Clayton and inaugural football manger Marcus Ashcroft are no longer at the Suns.

The same can be said of GWS equivalents Kevin Sheedy, Stephen Silvagni and Graeme Allan but GWS’s off-field transition has been less chaotic.

Al McConnell, who became GWS’s first employee when he was hired as high performance manager in 2009, is now director of coaching and mentors their AFLW team.

McConnell offers a quick caveat when asked how the Giants built their platform.

“Seven years is a pretty short window to judge a footy club. The real test is whether we are still here in 50 years,” McConnell said.

“Expansion clubs in emerging markets are fragile beasts … you have one or two poor years, make a few bad business decisions and it’ll turn to shit.”

McConnell rates Sheedy and Allan’s idea for draftees to share apartments in the same complex as the most important masterstroke.

Intended to mimic a US college setup, the uprooted teenagers became each other’s support networks.

The Lachie Whitfield scandal shows Allan didn’t always get it right. However, the club’s support networks helped Whitfield get back on track to a point where he is now in All-Australian contention.

Suns Campbell Brown (sacked after breaking teammate Steven May’s jaw in a drunken scrap), Harley Bennell (traded after a series of indiscretions) and Karmichael Hunt (whose drug charges brought the club into disrepute after his exit) did not achieve similar turnarounds.

The trio are among the many foundation Suns no longer at the club. Eight of their inaugural squad of 53 remain.

The Giants boast almost double that number.

“Our list structure at the start was pivotal. The older blokes were here to help build a club, not to build their careers,” McConnell said of Chad Cornes, Luke Power, James McDonald and Dean Brogan.

“They saw the bigger picture.”

The common critique that GWS were gift-wrapped a flag through concessions belies how three draft picks from last year will play on Saturday, how they plucked Matt de Boer and Dawson Simpson from the scrap heap.

There are other clear points of difference in the expansion race.

Of the various deals brokered by GWS chief executive David Matthews, perhaps the most important involved a golf driving range that became the club’s elite training facility.

Both teams started in demountables. The Giants moved into permanent digs after two seasons; the Suns opened their base in 2017.

Success is ultimately now the biggest trump card GWS boast when it comes to retaining and recruiting talent.

“When you’re not winning it’s very hard to sell the dream,” McKenna said.