Storm grant Harry special licence ahead of grand final
Melissa Woods |
Melbourne have made changes to their preparation for this year’s NRL premiership decider against Brisbane, including encouraging skipper Harry Grant to be more “selfish” about his approach.
The Storm are hoping to reap the rewards of lessons learnt from 2024 when they felt like they celebrated reaching the grand final for the first time in four years rather than winning it.
Last year Melbourne thumped the Sydney Roosters by 30 points to advance to the grand final against Penrith, and assistant coach Aaron Bellamy told AAP on reflection they revelled in the achievement.
“Last year when we won the prelim final it was like a big celebration of the week, of making the grand final because they’re so hard to make,” said Bellamy, son of head coach Craig, who is steering the team into a 11th grand final.
“But when the whistle blew on the prelim for this year it was like, yeah, it’s awesome that we made it but we just got on with business straight away.
“Last year wasn’t the result that we wanted … we just reviewed parts of the week that we thought if we got another opportunity at it we’d make some changes and we’ve done that this year.”
Following this season’s preliminary-final win at AAMI Park over Cronulla, partying in the sheds was put on hold as the players completed their recovery before heading to an 11.30pm team meeting rather than going out for beers.
Bellamy said they had switched around training sessions after their arrival into Sydney to keep the players fresh, and also tried to limit captain Grant’s commitments.
Grant was seen making an early exit from this year’s Dally M awards night, doing what he could to ensure he doesn’t become the first Storm captain of consecutive losing grand-final sides.
In his first year leading the club in 2024, the superstar hooker tried to look after his teammates which took a toll on his own energy levels.
“Again, learning from last year, like one of Harry’s strengths is he’s such a great teammate, he feels like he has to take the heat off other people from doing things but he probably learned that that didn’t help his energy last year,” Bellamy said.
“Not in a bad way, but he’s probably been a little bit more selfish about getting his preparation right and what he needs to do to play his best game.
“He probably just had to focus on himself a bit more and he learnt that last year, he doesn’t have to do everything for everyone.”
At full-strength apart from the suspension of prop Nelson Asofa-Solomona, injured superstars Jahrome Hughes and Ryan Papenhuyzen are back on deck with the Storm showing signs of peaking in the title showdown.
Bellamy felt the team was more “battle-hardened” by this year’s difficult run through the last competition rounds, which included two matches against Brisbane and also clashes with top-eight sides Penrith, Canterbury and the Sydney Roosters.
“Last year we were probably going a bit better in terms of our form but this year in the back-end of our season we’ve had to play the good teams … so we seem probably a bit more battle-hardened and ready for the big games compared to last year,” he said.
“We always want to be winning and playing well, but may have been going too good, whereas this year we’ve probably learned a bit about ourselves.”
AAP
