Easts were the talk of the town over summer and picked by many during preseason as competition favourites this year. They started in style, beating the defending premiers Sydney Uni in round one, but things began to unravel from that point on. While they improved throughout the season and featured in the finals again, Pauli Taumoepeau's side have some soul searching to do in the coming months. We caught up with the Easts' coach to find out why? Overview with Pauli Taumoepeau: “It wasn’t a good year for us,” Taumoepeau said.  “To bow out in the first week of the finals again, it was really disappointing. We ended up finishing in almost an identical spot to 2018 so it was disappointing not to improve on that.  “There were some key learnings, especially at the start of the year but to sum it up, we weren’t happy.  “We finished the year quite well and that was well documented but our start to the season hurt us. We lost three games in a row early in