I’m actually weirdly optimistic this year, or at least less pessimistic than usual. We’ve got a pretty settled squad for the first time in ages with very little change from last year to this year. We played terribly at times last year and still managed to win enough games to make the top 8, and KP was missing for about 3 months too.
The defence was pretty good most of the time in 2024 and it’s really the attack where we need to show some big improvement. Sharpe should add an extra running threat at the very least which we desperately lacked with Hastings/Cogger/Crossland/Gamble as the halves last year. Hopefully this frees up some space for KP to do his thing.
We’ll be a tough and gritty side once again, and if we can discover a bit of that attack that we had in 2023 then I think we might end up being pleasantly surprised by where we end up. Not predicting top 4 because I think we’re still not at that level but I could see us being 5th-6th again if KP is fit.