IT was a real empty feeling when full-time sounded on our season last week.
Every club starts pre-season training in November with a goal of playing finals football.
We'd managed to do so in our previous two campaigns, and that was certainly our objective when we kicked off this year.
Internally, we were all very confident in the strength of our roster and believed we had enough talent to improve on what we achieved in 2020 and 2021, when we qualified seventh on both occasions and bowed out in week one of the post-season.
Instead, eight other teams will be involved in this weekend's opening round of the play-offs and we'll be watching those games on TV.
That hurts.
Our fans are entitled to be disappointed. They turn for us every week and it was pretty shattering to lose so many home games this year.
It seemed like we were letting everyone down, and I can assure you that nobody feels worse about how this season has panned out than the players and staff.
The way we started was pretty promising, with wins against Sydney Roosters and Wests Tigers in our first two home games.
But then we suffered a couple of injuries and lost our way a bit. We're not making excuses because we just weren't good enough, and we need to be better.
That's disappointing for the club as a whole and no doubt there will be an extensive review process.
We've got to have a good look at ourselves as a group - coaches, players, everyone.
Nobody is satisfied with what we delivered on the pitch this year and we're the only ones who can fix it.
I've got no doubt we can turn it around in 12 months, and that this time next year we will be involved in the business end of proceedings.
To do that, we'll need to review our season, identify our strengths and weaknesses, and arrive back here for the pre-season ready to work harder than we have ever done.
I'm sure that will be the collective attitude, because nobody wants to go through another season like this.
It's been tough for everyone, on and off the field. But if nothing else, it will at least provide us with motivation when we're getting flogged on the training pitch in the middle of summer.
We'll have some new players coming in, all of whom have proven they are very good competitors.
In saying that, we'll farewell some good ones, too, including Tex Hoy, Jesse Sue, Edrick Lee and my good mate Mitch Barnett.
Barney's a bloke I loved playing alongside and I'll definitely miss him, but I understand the game is a business and he received a good offer from the Warriors, for three seasons.
I wish him well and have no doubt the Warriors have signed a great player.
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