Leeds Rhinos surpassed expectations in an extraordinary year - Luke Gale’s View from the Pitch

When we started, we talked a lot about improving from the season before and we have definitely done that, finishing fifth in the table and winning at Wembley.

Obviously, we wanted the season to go on a couple more weeks - and it would have been nice to end up higher on the table - but, to be honest, I don’t think we’ve been at our best since the Challenge Cup final.

I think there’s a few valid reasons why; fixture congestion and things like that.

Wembley probably took a bit more out of us, emotionally and physically, than we gave it credit for.

Last week, in the Catalans game, we made a terrible start; you can’t start a big match like that and we couldn’t quite claw it back. Then we lost Ava [Suemanufagai] and Mik [Oledzki] and it was a step too far.

If it had been a close game, we had played well and lost, I would have been upset - to put it midly - about two Catalans players getting long bans over things they weren’t punished for during the match.

But, if you go 12-0 down inside 10 minutes, you deserve everything you get in my opinion and we weren’t quite there on the night.

That said, why Michael McIlorum didn’t get sin-binned, or sent-off, is absolutely beyond me.

He caught Brad Dwyer squarely in the mouth and it doesn’t matter whether he meant to or not, that is a sending-off.

It was clear cut and I don’t understand how all the officials could miss it. You can’t get that wrong.

It was 18-10 at that stage with half an hour left.

Even then, we still had chances to win it, but there were a couple of daft offloads and errors, including one by me, when we could have scored.

The bottom line is I don’t think we were good enough on the night, so I have no issues with the result.

Looking at the season overall, it has to be classed as a successful one for us.

We are pushing the best teams now and the new challenge is to do it on a consistent basis.

On a personal note, you are always looking to improve, but I am pretty happy with my first year at Leeds.

I came in last November having had 18 months out with an Achilles rupture and a knee injury and I have missed only one or two training sessions throughout the whole year.

I haven’t missed a game due to injury and that has been great.

I think there’s loads of improvement in me, as well. The relationship with Rob Lui and Kruise Leeming is building and we’ve got Sean Long coming in which will help our attack.

There’s definitely a lot more to come from me and us as a team. After last week’s game we spoke about it being great for us to end the year with a trophy to our name and we are massively excited about what’s next.

It is a great work environment, everyone loves turning up to training and working hard. The silverware has been fantastic; that gives you a bit of extra motivation and it is a young team as well.

In any sport, relationships take time. I don’t think anyone comes in straight away and dominates. Every great sporting dynasty is built on years of hard work and we are massively excited about what lies ahead.

We have been in for individual reviews this week and then we’ll be taking some time off before getting stuck into pre-season in January.

I will probably have a week or two doing nothing and then I’ll start back building some foundations.

It is going to be difficult in terms of gyms because I’m not sure if they will be open, but I’ll be doing a lot of road running and that sort of thing.

I keep myself ticking over all year round, but it will be good to have a couple of weeks with my feet up and then I’ll start getting itchy feet and get back training again.