Twelve years ago I wrote at length about the making of Melbourne Storm in a city indifferent to rugby league and how its pressures and successes led to the 2010 salary cap cheating scandal.
While interviewing club and league insiders — trying to figure out who was at fault! — Storm got back onto the field, led by its three champions Billy Slater, Cooper Cronk, and Cameron Smith, and won the 2012 premiership.
In a heartbeat, the Storm story went from ‘rise and fall’ to ‘demise and resurrection’, and the club has since played in four more grand finals for two more Provan-Summons trophies.
Coach Craig Bellamy was the comeback’s architect.
It was Bellamy who delivered the famous ‘we will not walk away from this challenge’ TV statement in 2010, reading a speech co-authored by players Brett White and Cronk, polished by media manager Dave Donaghy (now Brisbane Broncos chief executive).
“The majority of them have been here since they’ve been kids,” he said.
“They spill blood for each other, for this club, for our members and for our supporters, for the development of rugby league in Victoria… I love these players.”
His love was, and still is, reciprocated.
So strong was the feeling among players of that era that one of his charges I interviewed began crying uncontrollably while recalling his time under Bellamy.
His coach was like a father to him, the player said.
In February 2013, Bellamy, not for the first or last time, called a media conference to announce his coaching future.
St George Illawarra had offered him a fat deal to coach the Dragons, and there was speculation that this time ‘Bellyache’ would finally leave his post beside the Yarra River.
Instead, he stayed.
“I feel like a fan,” he told journalists and staff. “This is my club. The emotional attachment is very strong, particularly to the players. I found that too hard to break.”
A dozen seasons later Bellamy is still at Storm, preparing for his tenth grand final, equalling the record of rugby league’s greatest coach, Wayne Bennett.
He turns 65 today.
The foundations upon which Bellamy built his legacy
The Storm won the premiership for the first time in 1999, but they struggled to keep hold of top players. (ALLSPORT: Getty Images/Mark Dadswell)
Melbourne Storm’s formative years of 1998-2002 set up Bellamy’s reign.
Playing home games at the old Olympic Park stadium, known as ‘The Graveyard’, under coach Chris Anderson, the club won the 1999 premiership and then struggled to hold onto some of its best players.
Owner News Ltd was losing money on Storm, but boss Lachlan Murdoch needed a Melbourne NRL market to attract national sponsors.
So the team kept fronting up.
Club founder John Ribot knew Storm had to scout and develop young athletes, so he shrewdly bought a team in the Queensland state league to act as a player nursery.
North Devils was overseen by Ribot’s ex-teammate Mark Murray, who employed an aspiring coach, Anthony Griffin, to help with recruiting.
Murray and Griffin gave dirt cheap contracts to otherwise unheralded Queensland youngsters Slater ($5,000), Smith ($5,000) and Cronk (about $3,000); they also signed Dallas Johnson.
Back in Melbourne, established players and employees were struggling with grief.
Player manager and father-of-three Mick Moore had died in an accident while the team was in New Zealand to play the Warriors.
“The boys loved him,” ex-media manager Chris Appleby recalled. “He was the kind of guy, if you ever had kids, you’d say I’ll model my kids on you.”
Winger Marcus Bai said: “I will never ever forget that day.”
The team finished sixth in 2000 and ninth in 2001.
Murray was brought in to coach when Chris Anderson departed in 2001, but a year later his job was done.
“I enjoyed the time there,” Murray remembered. “If that wasn’t such a great period on the field for the club I took some satisfaction out of the fact we… have had a major benefit to the club over a longer period of time.”
Storm finished tenth in 2002, but Slater, Smith and Cronk were training hard, getting better every day.
In need of a new coach, John Ribot went to the Brisbane Broncos and signed Wayne Bennett’s strength and conditioning manager and opposition analyst.
There was no way of telling how the former electrician and Canberra Raider would go.
From a strength and conditioning coach to one of the game’s greatest mentors
Bellamy oversaw his first Storm game in March 2003 (his youngest player in 2024, Sua Fa’alogo, was three days old), a win over Chris Anderson’s Cronulla.
His young squad was fit and durable after an impressive pre-season, during which the 43-year-old coach won a team trial around ‘The Tan’ track.
Leading player Matt Geyer suspected Bellamy trained hard in preparation for the run.
Bellamy’s intensity extended to cafe meetings with staff on Monday mornings — he demanded improvement and accountability from everyone.
In his first season, the club finished fifth and lost a qualifying final to Canberra.
In 2004, Storm came sixth, won a final against the Broncos, and lost to Canterbury in the semis.
Up in Queensland, at North Devils, more Storm teenagers were being blooded.
Greg Inglis, recruited as a 15-year-old by scout Peter O’Sullivan, made his NRL debut and scored a try in his first final against the Broncos in 2005.
By 2006, Cronk was blossoming at halfback as a replacement for Matt Orford.
The ‘Big Four’ playmakers — Slater, Smith, Cronk, and Inglis — were ready to dominate the league.
Grand final rollercoaster ride: Craig Bellamy goes to four consecutive grand finals
The Storm brought the 2007 (pictured) and 2009 premierships back to Melbourne, but the league later stripped them of their titles. (Getty Images: Mark Dadswell)
Under Bellamy’s watch, rookies and mature-aged recruits were put through military-style pre-seasons. Talent was nurtured, leadership and character prized.
Team harmony was both a reward and asset.
“While it’s not written on the wall when you walk in,” Matt Geyer explained of those early years. “It’s almost self-regulating because blokes who don’t fit in — they’re not happy — they end up going somewhere else.”
Expat Kiwis, New South Welshmen and Queenslanders relied on each other like family.
“There’s a unique bond that we have here that the Sydney boys don’t have,” Billy Slater told the press. “And hopefully we can use that to our advantage.”
In the lead up to the 2006 finals, Bellamy explained his ethos in an interview for ABC’s 7.30 program.
“I work really hard and I’m very disciplined in playing my role for the team. It’s the same as a player or any person in any walk of life, whether you’re a doctor or a butcher or you own your own store, whatever it is, you need to have (the right) mentality to work hard. How hard are you willing to work to be successful?”
He remembered his late father Norm’s advice.
“I don’t think I’m smarter than anybody else, as far as footy tactics or anything like that. I’m probably not as smart as some guys but one thing I’ve grown up with and one thing that has been proven to me over the years… if you work hard, at some stage you’ll get lucky.”
Nothing that has happened since has convinced him to change his approach.
Melbourne Storm played in the next four grand finals, losing in 2006 and 2008, winning in 2007 and 2009.
In 2010, after a salary cap investigation, the NRL stripped Bellamy and his team of their first two crowns, but he sees himself as a premiership coach of those seasons.
Players feel the same way.
The club still displays the 2007 and 2009 Provan-Summons trophies in its front office, alongside the prizes for winning in 1999, 2012, 2017, and 2020.
Craig Bellamy, the smiling 2024 version
Craig Bellamy is known for being grumpy on game day, but the Storm coach certainly enjoys himself at training. (Getty Images: Darrian Traynor)
He has always faced questions about his abilities; early in his career, they were about his temperament.
The odd post-match blow up and live television cutaways of his emotional responses to games in the coaching box shaped his reputation as a grump.
He is well known for giving his teams ‘sprays’ if they’re not performing to his high standards.
But if you watch Bellamy at training in Melbourne, you will see how contented he is.
He smiles and he strolls with his hands in his pockets or arms crossed, chatting to trusted assistants, including his son Aaron. Long time football manager Frank Ponissi is never far away.
This is where he seems happiest in his football life.
What he explained in 2013 — ‘the emotional attachment is very strong, particularly to the players’ — applies to a new generation.
A week ago, Bellamy sat down to face more questions about his style, this time from three of his best players, Ryan Papenhuyzen, Cameron Munster and Jahrome Hughes, on a podcast called Clubhouse.
These men are three quarters of Bellamy’s latest Big Four: Harry Grant is the other.
“I don’t give individual sprays like I used to,” he told his hosts. “I’ve been like that for a little while now.”
Bellamy says grandfatherhood has mellowed him.
“The thing I pride myself on and try to do is just be honest. (But) I think I deliver the message in a little bit different way, a bit calmer way.”
There remain few doubts, if any, about Bellamy the coach, although for a long time I had one question.
I always reckoned Bellamy’s greatest achievement was to develop and manage the careers of Smith, Cronk, Slater and, initially, Inglis.
After the salary cap debacle, I wanted to know whether it was possible for him to win a premiership without those exceptional players whose combination was a superpower.
Cameron Smith and Billy Slater are immortalised in bronze at AAMI Park. (AAP: Erik Anderson)
Well, Inglis left for the Rabbitohs in 2010, and Storm won the competition two years later. Eventually, Cronk moved to the Roosters in 2018 and Slater retired later that year; Melbourne won it all again in 2020.
Cameron Smith was still at hooker in Storm’s last premiership; he is now four years retired.
Aside from the statue of Smith and Slater where The Graveyard once stood, they are all gone.
My question, however, no longer seems apt.
Bellamy has once again restructured his squad by developing talent and finding the best in recruits to contend yet another grand final. His winning record is 70 per cent.
Smith or no Smith, win or lose against the record-breaking Panthers this weekend, Bellamy will return to Melbourne to see out his coaching days as one of the best ever.
