Top 10 I'll be happy with, top 8 would be an amazing achievement.

10th at best.

I originally thought 10th. But id hope another team has a poor start. If we suffer injuries, and we know we have players who are shall we say more prone to injury than others, i could see us being outside the top ten, and this is a massive move in the wrong direction outside the top 8 is in my eyes. The more I look at the other Squads the more I realise the club for some reason is gambling so much this season, with crowd figures and RFL acknowledgment, i hope its worth it and it isnt too long a season to bear.

Agree 100% with this. It seems to be a choice between doing well in the league and getting the stadium, the club has put all its eggs in the stadium basket, I just hope that's a sign that it's more than just a likelihood.

i think 7th

I said a couple of months ago we would finish 10th.

I know it sounds negative but given how physical the game is nowadays we are sure to get some injuries,
and we have a small squad. The 1st thirteen can give anybody a game but its not 1999,when raper had the luxury
of picking virtually the same team week after week.

I guess a plus point is with more a less the same squad we have continuity,and have no excuse of having alot of new
players time to settle in.

What i want to see is the squad to have better overall fitness, owen,shenton & joe to bulk up abit, and some of the forwards to lose abit of body fat

I'd personally would love another top 8 finish, but would be content with a top 10 finish.
I think there is every possibility of a play off finish, considering we dont have 10+ new players to settle in, and having some of the more unfit lads in for training a little earlier should boost fitness levels a fair bit too. I live feet away from Dean Widders and he's lost quite a bit of his chubbs.
I can only hope that we dont get plauged with injuries and play a regular team without tinkering with positions too much.
Also hopefully Shenny will bring some valuble experience back from the England camp.
Maybe im being too optimistic, but here's too hoping

Depends on injuries, our first choice 17 is better this year than last, and last year our first choice 17 did fantastically, the likes of brierly, thompson, holmes etc may step up this year and improve the team too.

For me the two key men will be hudson and sherwin, if we can keep them both fit then we will make the play offs imo, if not we wont.

Lot of course depends on if we can once again improve our defence, if we averaged one less try conceded per game last season we would have been top 3.

To add to this of course it all depends on how other teams do, one or two teams always massively underachieve (ie bradford and wire last year). Its going to be hard to predict this year, for instance on paper bradford are stronger, but they have a completley new half back pairing, a new starting hooker , and few other new players, they may take a while to gel and several of there players are injury prone (sculthorpe, reardon etc).They could be anywhere between 5th and 10th.

I would love to see what matterson could do if he had the same budget to work with that most coaches in the league have (ie full cap or close to it) currentley only quins and celtic spend less than us (with salford about on a par and wakey slightly more) and we still managed to do better than most teams. Spending the full cap could get us another 5 good sl quality players, give us some depth and add competition for places.

100% agree with this.

If your very lucky

Im amazed it took 14 posts before a troll came on, if and only if you read the threads again just about every one is just about saying that if we are lucky, we know were in for a hard season, so please rejoin your own board thats a good boy

Strong squad this year have Cas and a good coach in TM. I see you in the playoffs personally.