Gold Coast's youngsters won't be scarred from their horror AFL initiation, defender Campbell Brown said.

Carlton thrashed the Suns by 119 points on Saturday night in a crushing defeat Brown said would be a priceless learning experience for his teammates.

"It was certainly a tough start but we have got to start somewhere," Brown told the Nine Network's AFL Sunday Footy Show.

"I'm sure we will improve from here."

Brown said Gold Coast's dozen debutants showed nerves early against the Blues, who kicked nine goals to one in the opening quarter.

"Obviously having 12 guys on debut is a pretty unique thing," Brown said.

"We wanted to be really physical and really take it up to Carlton and obviously that wasn't the case in the first quarter.

"Probably the nerves of the young guys - and they (Carlton) got off to a flying start, they kicked nine goals in the first quarter.

"After that I thought we were pretty competitive, we won the hard ball gets and the clearances weren't too bad either.

"So there were a lot of positives to take out of the game."

Brown said the lessons learnt would prove invaluable.

"These young guys, they will probably learn more out of the two hours last night then they have over the last six months over the preseason," he said.

"They now know how hard you have to work to keep up with Chris Judd and Marc Murphy and these guys, and it's going to be a great learning experience for them."

Brown said rugby league convert Karmichael Hunt, who had just five disposals in his first AFL game, would be among those to learn most.

"He's really good in those one-on-one contests, he likes to throw his body around and getting the ball to ground, that is probably his real strength," Brown said.

"The more games he gets into his legs, the fitter he will get ... he's super competitive, he was as dirty as anyone the way the game was tracking for a while last night."

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