WE can look back at this season with a great deal of satisfaction.

On the field, we reached the Super League play-offs for the first time by scoring more points in the competition than ever before.

And our fifth-place finish was the Huddersfield club’s highest in British rugby league for 50 years.

On top of that, our record in the last 20 rounds of the regular season was played 20, won 13 and drawn one. Only champions St Helens did better during that period of time.

Off the field, there’s also been steady growth, with this season’s average crowd of just over 7,000 the club’s best for 50 years.

These are statistics that should make us all really proud.

But rather than just patting ourselves on the back, what we have achieved this year has just made us even more hungry for success.

There’s no question that after losing our opening seven League fixtures, we have become far stronger as a squad.

We’re mentally tougher and our desire to win games has grown.

As the season progressed, we became more confident with what we could do and how we played as a team.

Defensively, we were one of the best teams in the competition, but we sometimes lacked that cutting edge on attack.

And that’s one of the reasons why we’ve brought in strike players of the quality of Robinson, Hodgson, Whatuira and Gatis for next season.

Yet even though you could say things worked out well in the end, because we reached our goal of making the play-offs for the first time, I have to admit that it was very tough at the start.

Those seven straight losses were magnified because of the start made by the likes of Hull KR and Wakefield, who were among the pre-season relegation favourites but gained some big early wins.

As a result, there was a fair amount of anxiety around the place.

I knew this was a time when it was vital to stay focused and for me, as head coach, to take the lead.

Even though we had lost those games, in our opening matches we had played the top five sides from last season, as well as promoted Hull KR, who were always going to be fired-up for what was their first away Super League trip.

But the lowest point came with our seventh defeat on the trot, at home to Salford.

The anxiety among the players that day was there for all to see. It was as if the players had forgotten how to win.

Fortunately, the following week, we had the Challenge Cup tie against York.

That day we scored over 70 points, our confidence returned and we backed it up with our first win of the season, a 50-point success over Wakefield.

That was the start of a highly eventful rest of the season that resulted in a first appearance in the play-offs.

We can only wonder what might have been had we not started so slow.

Obviously, we hope there’s no repeat in 2008.

If there isn’t, then next season could be even better!