Banana peel works well as symbolism in sport, defined as something seemingly insignificant that can cause a major problem or mishap. And it's a metaphor with which Gold Coast might become very familiar over the next couple of months.
Take Saturday, for example. The Suns, sitting in the top eight, come to Melbourne to take on an Essendon side which is 13th, hasn't won for six weeks, and even managed to lose during its week off, three more players injured on the training track, the Dons now with 14 players on the official injury list.
For a team aspiring to finals, it should be a "gimme". But the Suns are fighting their own cultural baggage as much as opponents in their quest for respectability, and that makes even this very winnable assignment potentially tricky.
Not without foundation, either. It seems pretty clear that Gold Coast this season is better than it was in coach Damien Hardwick's first year, which was in turn better than the season before that.
But even this season, even as the Suns made their way to third spot on the ladder with an 8-2 record after 12 rounds, there have been jittery moments.
Indeed, two of them came at Saturday's venue of Marvel Stadium, an 11-point loss to Richmond, which had won only one game previously, in Round 6, and in Round 11 a struggling 19-point win over St Kilda, which had lost five of its previous six games.
Gold Coast has also beaten Adelaide, Western Bulldogs and Hawthorn, mind you, but until it consistently puts away the teams it should, there will remain a lingering scepticism about the Suns' finals credentials.
Hardwick told his weekly press conference on Thursday that the Suns work in four-week blocks. The current block started with the post-bye loss to Greater Western Sydney and last week's win over Melbourne, and will end next week against the Pies.
But if he and his coaching staff could reframe that coaching calendar, you'd think Saturday would be the first in what could be a season-defining month of football, Gold Coast to then negotiate the top three teams on the ladder, first Collingwood, then Adelaide, then Brisbane.
That means a "banana peel" game followed by three heavyweight bouts, and there's a fair chance by the end of that run we'll know with reasonable certainty whether or not we might finally be seeing the Suns in a finals campaign for the first time in 15 seasons.
Mind you, Gold Coast's coaching staff could also have looked retrospectively at a four-week block between Rounds 12-15 (during which the Suns beat St Kilda then lost three in a row to Fremantle, Geelong and GWS) as a pointer to what needs to be avoided on the run home.
"If we chase perfection it's always going to be tough," Hardwick said on Thursday. "If our 80% is good enough, it will beat most sides. What probably happened the last couple of weeks in the GWS and Melbourne games is when we had that (poor) 20%, it was a diabolical 20% which cost us between five and eight goals.
"If we can reduce that to two to three goals, that's going to be a better result for us. Our 80% has been pretty bloody good. What we've got to make sure we do is when we do have those bad moments, they're better, which is a thing we've been working on as well."
Perhaps one of the significant takeaways from the Suns' three losses in a row to the Dockers, Giants and Cats was that none was an old-fashioned Suns "shocker", the margins only 11, 24 and seven points respectively.
On the other hand, last week against Melbourne, they allowed a 46-point lead 10 minutes into the final term to be eroded to the point the Demons' Jake Melksham could have made it 14 points the difference with more than five minutes left on the clock.
During the run of losses beginning with Fremantle, opposition pressure began to take a significant toll on the Suns' ball movement and efficiency.
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Their defensive 50 to forward 50 transition fell from an AFL ranking of third to 16th, and their kicking efficiency from second to 15th. Their own defensive pressure fell away, their forward 50 contested possession differential ranking going from third to last, their points from turnover ranking sliding from second to last.
And so, to Saturday night. Essendon has lost four games in a row as the injuries have piled up. The Bombers have the fourth-youngest list in the AFL with only 14 100-game players, five of whom will be out injured this week. Of 38 different statistical categories, Gold Coast ranks top six in 18, Essendon just four.
The same fixture last season produced one of Gold Coast's most memorable wins, with Mac Andrew kicking the match-winning goal after the siren. This time, however, the Suns should have the four points banked well before then.
Hang on ... should? In Gold Coast's ongoing quest for credibility and a path still littered with obstacles, Hardwick and co. well would do well to treat even that word as a potential banana peel.
You can read more of Rohan Connolly's work at FOOTYOLOGY.