The coach and the president were seen to be in conflict over the assessment of the season after missing the finals with another ninth-placed finish, with March rating it more poorly than Terry Wallace.
Wallace is heading into the final season of a five-year deal, and while March admitted that the ninth spot this year was better than some others had been, he said it was a must for the Tigers to play in September.
"Oh definitely, it is a different ninth. I think the previous times we'd finished ninth we'd probably dropped off in the second half of the season," he told SEN Radio.
"We'd had good starts to the season and our form had waned towards the end of the year and we'd limped towards ninth.
"This year we had a bit of a slow start – we had a tough draw early – but then we really got some momentum and were one of the best-performed sides in the second half of the year."
The Tigers defence was the cornerstone of their resurgence, with talls Will Thursfield, Luke McGuane and Kelvin Moore all having less than 50 games under their belts but progressing nicely.
"We've got a pretty young list now, and a really solid back six now, which is something we probably haven't had in any of those years leading in, so look, we've got a lot of confidence going into next year.
"But we've also got a lot of expectations, and I think all of us around the club are expecting us to push to the finals next year."
The Tigers are without a main sponsor, but March said that wasn't far off being resolved.
"We're very close to finalising our sponsorships at the moment – we've been working hard on that – and we're very confident that we'll certainly be going into next year with all of our sponsorship properties sold.
"We've locked down most of them. We've got a couple to go, but we're in final negotiations with a number of those.
"The club's had another profitable year, and we would expect to make a small profit in 2009, and who knows, if we can get back into the eight, then there's additional revenue streams that come from that."
