If 2016 was anything to go by, Mitchell Moses is gonna be a gun.

Despite enduring a season full of drama with the Robbie Farah situation, Wests Tigers actually resembled a team on the rise in 2016. While we can debate until the cows come home about the treatment of Farah and how coach Jason Taylor's dealt with a club legend, it's hard to argue that this young group of Tigers made fairly substantial improvements under Taylor. So much so that it got to the point where the Tigers were a legit chance of making the top-8 and if they managed that, it would have put a very weird twist on the Farah saga.

The Tigers were within a whisker of the NRL Finals and James Tedesco only played 17 games this season. Luke Brooks played 21 games, meaning that there were periods of the season where the Tigers were unable to roll out their gifted spine-trio of Tedesco, Brooks and Mitchell Moses. The margin for error here is tiny as the Tigers desperately needed this trio to play nearly every game alongside each other if they were to make any waves this season, such is their creative flair and understanding of each other.

Everyone can however see that the best years of the Tigers are ahead of them and that Moses held things down for the Tigers this season in the No.6 jersey will be hugely beneficial for the team and Moses moving forward. Brooks is a very slick halfback who takes care of most of the organising and implementing the structure of the Tigers attack, while Moses tends to play like he's in the backyard and the attacking instincts that he showed this season were almost unmatched in the NRL.

What impressed me the most about the Tigers this season though were the other players who stood up and played their role in this season's relative success. Aaron Woods is one of the best props in the NRL and led the Tigers forwards in runs and running metres, which came in just 19 games. Woods was helped by arrival of Tim Grant and the development of Sauaso Sue, Josh Aloiai, Kyle Lovett, JJ Felise and Ava Seumanufagai. Seumanufagai was a stand out for the Tigers and along with Aloiai, they played the most games for the Tigers this season (24) and Seumanufagai was 2nd to Woods in running metres and runs for Tigers forwards.

David Nofoaluma was nothing short of a beast on the wing for the Tigers and his 140 tackle busts put Tedesco's 106 in the shade, plus he had the most running metres of any Tigers player. We've known that Nofoaluma can score tries and do the core role of a winger very nicely, this season however we saw him run the footy with vigour and he was often taking two carries in a set which with his speed and power is a huge asset.

Kevin Naiqama and Tim Simona were low key impressive at centre and the Tigers will be far better off with these two spending a full season as the centre pairing. Throw in Jordan Rankin, who's main job was to be a winger but he also played some fullback and chipped in at dummy half as well. That's a very settled group of outside backs and there are many teams who would envy the nature of this outside back group, heck make it the whole backline as right now I can give you a talented backline that already has chemistry in abundance: Tedesco, Nofoaluma, Simona, Naiqama, Rankin, Moses, Brooks.

The reason the Tigers weren't so good this season was because of their defence. The Tigers conceded 607 points this season and only the Knights were worse that the Tigers in that regard. You'd expect that from a young team who are still coming to terms with the rigours of consistent NRL footy, especially the likes of Brooks and Moses who defend out on the edges but struggle to handle a big edge forward or centre.

What we saw this season though is that the Tigers can score points pretty damn freely and another off-season with Tedesco, Moses and Brooks on the training park together should only enhance this. Yeah the Tigers need to tighten up their defence, but they finished 9th with a 15th-ranked defence so it will only take a minor improvement defensively with their attacking prowess, to slide into that top-8 next season.