Having come close to registering an historic treble in 2006/07, Tigers missed out in the finals of both the EDF Energy Cup and the Guinness Premiership, an experience Croft says will make the squad even more hungry for success.
“Everyone expects Tigers to be winning silverware,” says Croft, who made 22 appearances for the club in 2007/08.
“Losing against Wasps makes us even more desperate to do that. We’ll be desperate to put things right. At a club like Leicester, we start the season aiming to win trophies. We haven’t quite achieved that this year, so we’ll be even more determined to that next season.”
Despite the obvious disappointment of Saturday’s loss, Croft insists Tigers will enter next season in a positive frame of mind as they look to make 2008/09 a memorable one for the club.
“The fact that we made it to two finals is credit to the club. It was a hard fought way to get to both of them. Beating Wasps in Cardiff to reach the EDF Energy Cup Final was a massive win for the club and winning an away semi-final against Gloucester was also huge. Getting to two finals shows that we are still a force to be reckoned with but, unfortunately, the better team won on Saturday.
“We’ll analyse the mistakes we made in this game and in other games during the year and we’ll then be looking for a really good pre-season and to start off on the right foot next year. We’ll meet again in June and July and we’ll try and move forward as a collective and start next season with a bang.”
