After a slow start, Eastern Suburbs won eight straight matches at the pointy end of the season and entered the playoffs full of confidence on the back of a thrashing of Randwick in the final round.

But back to back finals losses to grand finalists Eastwood and Gordon led to another early and disappointing end to the Beasties season

Overview with Pauli Taumoepeau:

“We ended the year with no trophies, so that’s disappointing. I think that’s the only way to measure it really. I think we put ourselves in a position to do something special but we just fell short again,” the coach told Rugby News.

“To have won eight games in a row after staring down the barrel of missing the playoffs earlier in the season, I was really proud of how the boys stood up against some pretty good opposition in those last eight weeks.

“I’m really disappointed that we still don’t have a trophy, but I’m proud of the way our group performed this season.

“We didn’t start the year well and that just put the pressure on earlier for us then it should have. I thought it would take a bit of time for us to play our best footy this year but I didn’t think we’d lose as many games as we did earlier in the year.

“We always knew though that if we clicked, then we had some really good rugby in us and I’m glad we persisted with some of the new things we did this year, because we saw the benefits of that towards the backend of the regular season.

“Losing two straight finals games is obviously really disappointing. The Eastwood loss was a weird one and there are a hundred things that I’d do differently if I had my time again.