A new year has arrived, and NRL clubs will be back from their Christmas breaks to ramp up pre-season training in the next week.
The final run to the season often brings with it heightened intensity and discussion as fans ready themselves for the new campaign.
This year could on another level altogether with the season opening in Las Vegas a week ahead of schedule.
Expectations are a funny thing though. Every year, there are teams who will go well beyond what they were expected to do, and others who fall a long way short of where they were supposed to be.
But what exactly are those expectations for all 17 NRL teams in 2024?
Here is what your team needs to do to earn a pass in 2024.
8. Cowboys: Top eight
It's very difficult to know exactly what to make of the Cowboys as things gear up for the 2024 season.
The North Queensland side were very good in 2022, but have been very poor on either side of that, missing the finals in both 2021 and 2023.
So the question heading into 2024 was whether the 2023 campaign was in fact the outlier for the Cowboys, or whether 2023 is going to simply become a blip on the radar.
For Todd Payten's future and the club's fan base, fingers will be crossed that it was the later of those two situations. If it's the former, then questions are going to be asked in Townsville.
Like other clubs who fell out of the top eight from a position of power in 2023, the Cowboys roster was far better than where they actually wound up.
Some could blame the Origin period, but the truth is, the Cowboys struggled enormously when they left Townsville in 2023 and need to find a way to address that in the new campaign.
Anything less than a visit to the finals will - and should be - viewed as a failure.
