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.
This might seem somewhat harsh for the Broncos, particularly when you consider they have lost two of the stars of their 2023 grand final side in Herbie Farnworth and Thomas Flegler, as well as veteran second-rower Kurt Capewell, who joined the New Zealand Warriors in a surprise move last month.
But anything less than premiers won't be good enough for the Red Hill-based club who haven't been to the top of the NRL mountain since 2006.
That's based on two years of (for the most part) strong results. 2022 saw Brisbane sit in the top four before dramatically fading out and missing the top eight. Their youngsters were better for the run in 2023 though as the club, with Reece Walsh arriving to play fullback, made the decider.
Now those players are another year along. Walsh, Ezra Mam, Jordan Riki, Selwyn Cobbo. There is so much talent in Kevin Walters' side, and they have put an enormous amount of faith into Brendan Piakura to replace Capewell.
Some will point to their exits, but Brisbane are still a strong side, and given the decisions they have made, anything less than becoming premiers this year will feel like a bit of a miss.
The Raiders will be one of the more intriguing teams to follow in 2024, purely because it's difficult to know exactly what to expect out of them.
The Raiders, one on foot, significantly over achieved by making the finals in 2023. They had a negative for and against, and it's difficult to remember more than a few games throughout the course of the campaign where they properly dominated their opposition.
But then, you could also argue they overachieved. They weren't expected for greatness prior to the season, but at one point, through grinding out wins, they were looking as if they were going to be a show at forcing their way into the final top four.
It's that, even with the departure of Jack Wighton, which suggests that anything less than a top eight finish in 2024 will be a failure, although most clubs could probably point to the same and suggest that finals are the bare minimum expectation.
One of those clubs whose fans will no doubt be suggesting that finals are the bare minimum expectations are the Bulldogs, who have had a long, lean stint without success.
That absolutely must change in 2024.
Canterbury have continued their long recruitment run under new coach Cameron Ciraldo and ever willing to talk director of football Phil Gould.
Eyebrows have certainly been raised over the nature of some of the moves though, with utilities joining the Bulldogs from the left, right and centre.
That isn't neccessarily a bad thing, although there are plenty of questions over how the Belmore-based outfit will line up for the 2024 season.
We are saying that, at the very least, they need to be in the top eight fight. Whether they make the finals or not is another story. Long-suffering fans of the club will believe this is a must given the arrival of Stephen Crichton, but we aren't so sure.
The Sharks will be a premiership threat in 2025 with the arrival of Addin Fonua-Blake, but that in itself creates an intriguing dynamic for the black, white and blue heading into 2024.
We have probably set the bar a little low in suggesting that the bare minimum - a top eight finish - would be viewed as the acceptable pass mark for the club in 2023.
But that's what it feels like. It's another season where Nicho Hynes is going to be something of a one-man team.
But it doesn't have to be that way. If the forwards stand up fighting for their futures ahead of the arrival of Fonua-Blake, and the likes of Teig Wilton and Briton Nikora keep improving, then the Sharks have enough talent.
It's also a moving year with Braydon Trindall to take over the number six, and the likely progression of a few in the backline, including the exciting Sam Stonestreet and Kayal Iro.
There might be moving parts on the Shire, but this is a team who must finish in the top eight, and internally, will be aiming higher.
The Titans are a club where it's difficult to know exactly what to expect in 2024 as Des Hasler takes over head coaching duties.
The veteran coach will be able to do just that as well - coach. The Titans are in the position of having most of their roster locked in long-term, which on one foot may allow Hasler to perform a longer term build on the Gold Coast as he moulds the team to his style.
But Hasler generally isn't about waiting for results, and the club have plenty of talent available.
The forwards alone - with Tino Fa'asuamaleaui, Moeaki Fotuaika, David Fifita and the returning Beau Fermor who was on the verge of an Origin call up in 2022 - will rival any pack in the game.
There are still questions over the backline and halves in particular, while Hasler has one of the competiton's biggest calls to make in selecting his fullback, but the potential negatives don't outweigh the positives.
The Titans should improve from 2023. They will internally believe finals are a must, but fighting for the top eight will be enough to earn a pass in Hasler's first season.
Aim high and you just never know.
That may well be the order of business for the Sea Eagles throughout the 2024 campaign as they look to avenge their miss on the finals in 2023.
Anthony Seibold's first season in charge on the Northern Beaches was, frankly, at the best of times a bit of a roller coaster.
Taking over from Des Hasler was always going to leave in its wake a fair amount of pressure, and that's the way it went for Manly, who also had injuries - namely the one to Tom Trbojevic - to contend with.
It'll be Trbojevic who they are counting on to be fit in 2024. The last time he played anything close to a full season in 2021, Manly found themselves in the top four and with a preliminary final to boot.
The roster is good enough, the arrival of Luke Brooks and return of Josh Schuster to the second-row should be a positive and it is what they should be aiming for again.
The Storm have been a picture of consistency and success for over a decade in the NRL.
That has been under threat more than ever in recent seasons though.
Despite never looking the full picture in 2023 though, the Storm still found themselves in the top four and qualifying for a preliminary final before being hammered by the Panthers.
That isn't to say a preliminary final was a pass last year though, and it's not to say it would be a pass this coming year.
Bellamy settles for nothing but the best, and while Melbourne have something of a lack of experience in their forward pack following a number of key departures ahead of 2023, the time for those excuses has now come to a terminus.
It's grand final or fail in 2024 for the Storm in what could - and likely will - be Bellamy's final season in charge.
The Knights are a very difficult team to know what to make of ahead of the 2024 season, but there is little doubt they will not be keen on going backwards from a magical second half of 2023.
If you rewind the clock, Newcastle found themselves anchored in the bottom four at one point last year and with Adam O'Brien reportedly under pressure for his job.
Fast forward to the end of the campaign though, and it was O'Brien smelling of roses after the Kalyn Ponga parade led the men from the Hunter all the way to the semi-finals, having also hosted an elimination final the week prior.
The turnaround and winning streak was miraculous, and while there will be those wondering whether it was all a flash in the pan for the Knights, they as a club need to be in the top four this year.
Another club where it is impossible to know what to expect is the Warriors.
Like the Knights - who they actually beat in that semi-final before going on to lose a preliminary final to the Brisbane Broncos - the Warriors came into the season expecting little from the outside.
That is where the similarities ended for rookie coach Andrew Webster's side though. The Warriors were excellent all season, turned their home in Auckland into a fortress and wound up in the top four.
That is a feat they will be looking to - and expecting to - repeat in 2024.
That said, the question around the Warriors as always is going to be consistency. The positive this time though is that it is whether they can play two seasons in a row, not two games or two halves.
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.
Parramatta were one of the real disappointments of the 2023 campaign, going from grand finalists the season before, to missing the top eight altogether.
Brad Arthur enters 2024 as a man under pressure - of that there can be no doubt. For years now he has had a roster that, by and large, has underperformed where it really should be.
Apart from the grand final in 2022, the Eels haven't come close to winning a competition, and you could argue that even in that campaign, they were still a long way short of the Panthers who took out the premiership.
While there is little doubt another failure to play finals football would leave plenty of doubt over the future of Arthur, in actuality, anything short of the preliminary finals is going to be viewed as an abject failure for the blue and gold who have a roster suited to high-intensity, high-end rugby league.
The Panthers have been the NRL's measuring stick of success for three back-to-back seasons now, and you could argue, were pretty close to being so in 2020 as well despite falling short in the grand final.
That's something they haven't done in any of the last three campaigns though, and the club will undoubtedly enter the 2024 season with the same expectations.
A premiership.
That's where the men from the foot of the mountains are at. While they don't have Stephen Crichton heading into the new year, you could certainly very easily make the argument that they actually have had tougher assignments to replace in recent seasons and succeeded, such as the departure of Apisai Koroisau.
You'd be a brave man to bet against the Panthers, and realistically, anything short of a fourth straight premiership will be hard to be regarded as a pass.
South Sydney suffered a dramatic fadeout at the end of the 2023 season - one of the worst in NRL history.
In fact, they now hold the record as the team who led the competition the furthest into a season and yet still went on to miss the top eight when it was all said and done.
That is, without a shadow of a doubt, a disaster, and a second year in a row without finals action will leave Jason Demetriou under pressure for his job, and a number of players under pressure for theirs.
The dynamic at Redfern in 2024 is going to be an intriguing one to follow with the arrival of Jack Wighton from the Canberra Raiders. He will be forced to play out of position in the centres, although could yet wind up in the halves if Lachlan Ilias doesn't find dramatic and rapid improvement.
Other players must stand up, and Latrell Mitchell being on the park rather than the sideline would certainly help.
This is a side good enough to go the distance, and anything short of a trip to the big dance in October simply won't be up to par.
The Dragons come into the 2024 season as undoubtedly one of the favourites to take out the wooden spoon, despite the fact they have a new coach at the helm with premiership-winning experience from his previous time at the Cronulla Sharks.
Despite that, Flanagan has been open and very honest in public about the shortcomings of the Dragons and why the club have struggled as much as they have in recent years.
And a large part of that, whether fans, administrators and the players themselves want to admit it or not is down to the playing group available.
They have been hit hard in recent weeks too with Talatau Amone deregistered, that coming after the joint-venture allowed Jayden Sullivan to walk to the Wests Tigers in the middle of the 2023 campaign.
The Dragons, like every team, will start the season wanting to play finals football, but in truth, avoiding the wooden spoon will be a surprise to some, and avoiding the bottom four should be treated the pass mark.
The Roosters are a better side, both on paper and in the potential stakes, than what they were able to ultimately serve up during the 2023 campaign.
While you wouldn't go as far as to call 2023 a failure for the Roosters, it so nearly was. The club looked as if they were going to be in danger of missing the top eight for a chunk of the season before a late surge of form pushed them into the finals.
They were bundled out by the Panthers in Week 2 of those finals, but it was the turnaround in form of the likes of Brandon Smith, James Tedesco and a halves combination that barely played together during the middle third of the season which will paint the picture for a better 2024.
The club welcome Spencer Leniu and Dominic Young, two players who should thrive under Trent Robinson's coaching, and realistically, anything short of a preliminary final is going to be a failure.
You'd actually expect that, internally, they want and will be expecting better than that.
The Tigers have been the NRL's perennial battlers, having not made the finals for more than a decade and also picking up the last two wooden spoons on the trot.
That must start to turn around in 2024, even if it doesn't go full circle yet.
The club have made more signings for the 2024, and will move on from the Luke Brooks era with a completely new halves combination, under a new coach in Benji Marshall, with, maybe just as importantly, a new board off the field.
While Jarome Luai is set to join the club in 2025 (reportedly, anyway,) the Tigers need to start seeing some improvement in 2024.
A pass mark for the club in Marshall's first season at the helm isn't going to be making the finals - to be perfectly honest, that may be pie in the sky stuff for the joint-venture.
But avoiding the bottom four and at different points of the season looking like a side who might be in the mix for the top eight is an absolute must.
Another season anchored to the bottom would be a dismal failure.
The Dolphins will enter their second season answering a few of the questions which hampered them during their inaugural campaign, and with only a solitary season left under the guidance of super coach Wayne Bennett.
With Bennett set to hand over to Kristian Woolf at the end of 2024, the Dolphins may well only keep getting better, but you feel there was enough there from the inaugural season now with the added signings of Thomas Flegler and Herbie Farnworth out of the Broncos grand final side to have 2024 as a strong campaign.
Depth was the big issue for the Dolphins during 2023.
The side were, if you remember, actually in the top eight for much of the first half of the campaign before fading as injuries and suspensions caught up with them.
This year, making the top eight is a pass mark. The Dolphins are nicely set off the field, and some of their other youngsters will be better for the run on it.