2023 has been a year full of incredible rugby league stories.
When you have a grand final for the ages, sacked coaches - including one at Origin level - a new team entering the competition and big changes across the competition, that is hardly going to come as a surprise to many.
But what were the stories that defined 2023?
Here are the top ten.
9. 2022 top eight teams crumble
We will walk more specificially about the South Sydney Rabbitohs a little further into this piece, but they were just one of three sides from the 2022 top eight who were expected to match their performances in 2023.
The North Queensland Cowboys and Parramatta Eels were ultimately well short of expectations, both internally and externally throughout 2023.
The Eels are difficult to overlook as the most disappointing team of 2023.
The men in blue and gold, coming off a grand final, had expectations one would have expected of at least pulling off a finals appearance, and realistically going deep into September.
That didn't happen though, with Brad Arthur's side eventually finding themselves out of finals contention. They weren't helped at times by injury or suspension, but there were more than enough question marks both over individual performances and the way they were coached to suggest things won't rapidly go back to the way they were in 2022 come the end of the 2024 campaign.
The Cowboys meanwhile still were solid enough at home, winning 8 of their 12 games there throughout the 2023 campaign, but away from home, they were abysmal.
Todd Payten's side simply struggled to have any consistency from week to week, and while they attempted to make some changes at the back-end of the year to underperforming areas of the side, they were a case of too little too late.
Big things will be required in a shake up for Payten if the Cowboys are going to prove come the start of 2024 that 2022 is the normal moving forward, rather than the anomaly.
