Part of the problem was that in 2009 and 2010 we showed that we relied way too much on Snake. With him only playing a handful of games over those two years, our potent attack suddenly became limp and our defense suffered as well. Robbo did a serviceable job as a replacement in 2009 and Ben Farrar was ok at best in 2010, but they didn't provide anywhere near the impact from fullback that Snake did. And by having to play Robbo at fullback, it forced Des to play T-Rex on the wing. We lost a lot of speed without Snake.
Of course, having Chris Bailey as the 5/8 didn't really help things either.
In 2010 we were actually lucky to even play finals. Had the Scum's salary cap rorting not been exposed, realistically we would have finished 9th (even though not playing for anything, Melbourne won enough games that they would have qualified under normal circumstances).
2012 was good, but that effort in the preliminary final against Melbourne was hard to take.
2013.......robbed, plain and simple.
2014. I'm not saying we could have beaten Souffs in the GF, though we'll never know, but again we were robbed. How they did not call Josh Reynolds offside during golden point in the semi-final is anyone's guess. Even the touch judges told the refs he was offside, but they simply ignored it and allowed him to get involved in the play.
2015. Well, poor early season form and a horror run with injuries just about killed our season as we all know. We did come back though but that late season loss at home to the Speels hurt. We had everything to play for but didn't get it done.
2016 looks better already, on paper at least. Our forwards have been strengthened and we do have some depth in the outside backs. What worries me (other than having a rookie coach, but you've got to start somewhere) is the halves. Outside of DCE we are extremely light on there. If he goes down injured we really only have either Isaac John or Tim Moltzen who can play halfback, and neither are a patch on DCE. And we're likely to play most of, if not all of the season without a recognised 5/8.