Hi, it’s Eorl here.
To say we’re all still absolutely gutted over the events of Thursday night and our play-off defeat at Warrington would be an understatement.
After clinching the Super League Leaders Shield the other month, we did genuinely feel we could build on that and reach a first Grand Final at Old Trafford and lift the Super League trophy.
So the defeat has hit us hard.
But, even so, there were so many encouraging signs from this latest game against Warrington that we know that when pre-season arrives our confidence will be as high as ever.
It’s now nine defeats on the trot for us against the Wolves, but the play-off game the other night was as close as we’ve come to beating them during that time. It really could have gone either way.
So we know that next time we play them that gap will be even closer and we’ll finally get our revenge – and make sure we take that next big step to Old Trafford.
We really have made massive progress under Baloo this season, and we know that with the mentality that exists inside this club that progress will continue.
Steps are already being taken to make sure the squad will be even stronger in 2014, with several key signings in the pipeline.
Because of the success we’re now enjoying we’re in a far stronger position to recruit high-calibre players. Winning trophies obviously makes you a far more attractive proposition to potential new arrivals.
And, personally, I hope we are able to add a bit more strength to our pack.
Having lost Luke O’Donnell back to Australia after the first game and with Stu Fielden making just nine appearances, the workload for the forwards increased significantly.
We obviously didn’t do too bad, did we?
But just imagine what we could do with a couple of new big fellas in our pack!
That really could make all the difference in the world, as could a first full pre-season for Ukuma Ta’ai with us.
Everyone knows about all the problems he faced getting here in the first place, which meant he didn’t have a pre-season. As a result, it’s taken him a lot of hard work to get up to speed.
But towards the end of this year we’ve started to see what Ukuma’s all about, so a full off-season’s work this time around makes him a very exciting proposition for 2014.
In fact, 2014 is already an exciting proposition, full stop!
Hopefully our end-of-season jamboree will help get the Warrington defeat out of our system.
This year we decided to head to Blackpool in fancy dress, and a good time was had by all.
Some of the outfits on show were pretty impressive, to say the least.
One of my favourites was definitely Scott Grix, who turned up as millionaire Salford owner Dr Marwan Koukash! The resemblance was uncanny.
I was also struck by Jason Chan, who was championing his Chinese roots by pretending to be a box of noodles.
Another quality effort came from our captain Danny Brough, who, to be honest, didn’t have to work too hard in dressing up as a leprechaun.
As for me, I chose to fall into the character of one of the chants of rival fans, proclaiming me as a ‘fat Robbie Savage’.
So heading off to the seaside resort in full Derby County kit seemed the obvious choice!
