Despite having not registered a win at Etihad Stadium in its short history, Gold Coast and its key-defender Steven May are confident of a strong showing on Sunday.

From six prior games at the venue, the Suns have failed to score more than 100 points. But it’s an average losing margin of almost 12 goals that is perhaps most concerning.

“Our record at Etihad is really irrelevant,” May told the Suns’ website.

“Most teams and football people know we are a completely different team now to when we played there previously.

“Only (played at Etihad) twice last year, one of which was when we competed really well against Essendon despite losing Lynchy (Tom Lynch) and Rischa (Michael Rischitelli) with injuries before half-time.”

Both North Melbourne and the Gold Coast will be aware past records count for little come 1pm on Sunday. After all, Guy McKenna’s team had lost its first three games to North before a convincing 15-point victory at Metricon Stadium in Round 11 last year.

Coming off two consecutive wins, the Suns could be further boosted by the returns of Tom Nicholls, Charlie Dixon and Harley Bennell.

In particular Bennell could be an important inclusion, having troubled the Kangaroos in the past. He had 27 disposals and 2 goals when the sides met back in 2012.

“We have a great opportunity to take on North Melbourne and we might even have a few players returning from injuries, so we will be going down to have a red hot crack,” May added.

“They had a great win over Fremantle in Perth on Friday night and have been playing really well lately, so we know it won’t be easy.”