I think we all have to accept that we had three fantastic chances to win the Grand Final and blew it big time - on all occasions we were the best team in the competition. We lost out to the experience of Leeds in the semi then the final the following year, then Smith's decision not to have Hodgson at least on the bench ultimately cost us against the bully boy tactics of Wigan.
This season has been poor as a result of losing experienced players, injuries, poor recruitment and poor team selection. Players who have been brought in to fill a shirt - King, Patton, Philbin - have been dropped as soon as the usual suspects have recovered from injury despite the fact they might have outperformed them!
Another factor is that there have been no obvious choices to replace Smith - it's like Alex Ferguson at United in some respects but without the trophies!

That's not pessimism that's law of averages

I haven't read all the threads since last night, so this has probably been mentioned already, but after beating Saints we recorded at least one win against every team in Super League this season other than Huddersfield. We don't have a bad track record against Huddersfield so although full credit to them for their three wins over us this year, I'm not overly worried about them in general.

Considering how woefully poor we've played at times this year, I see that as a big reason for optimism. It's a far cry from the days when we knew before the game had even kicked off against one of the top clubs that we were almost certainly beaten, and obviously the decade of misery against Saints.

Inconsistent, yes, but we've proved ourselves to still be good enough to beat ten out of the eleven teams we faced. That's not a bad platform to regroup and build from.

Add "the thugs" to that list

We beat them at home?

All-in-all not a bad season in the end. I predicted a mid-table finish because we have a squad with a number of flaws and we've suffered a lot of injuries, and we finished mid-table with a 0.5 winning record and a +78pd (so not a negative in either stat, just). That'll do for me this season. Bang on my prediction.

I think we've addressed a number of the squad flaws for next season and the drain of players and arrival of many new faces will freshen the place up in the two-year wake after our really good squad that we had from 2010-2013. It still won't be perfect and still might not be enough to make the four but I think we'll put a bigger challenge in to try and get there.