Warriors rock Storm to serve up fourth straight loss
Melissa Woods |
Craig Bellamy says his Melbourne team may as well have “gone to the pub” after his focus on defence failed to stop a Warriors onslaught at AAMI Park that ended a 12-year losing streak.
A physical Warriors outfit ran over the top of Melbourne in their Saturday night clash to score six tries en route to a 38-14 victory, ending a 17-game hoodoo against their Victorian rivals.
It’s the first time since 2022 that traditional powerhouse Melbourne have lost four consecutive games, with the previous time way back in the 2015 season.
The Storm paid the ultimate price for their poor discipline, with coach Bellamy left seething as the Warriors ran away with the match in the second half after leading 18-14 at halftime.
The home side didn’t score a point after the 25th minute, with seven ruck infringements to three leaving them repeatedly back-pedalling.
Melbourne also conceded seven penalties, with lock Trent Loiero, who was put on report, and second-rower Joe Chan the worst offenders.
After their 40-point loss to Penrith last round Bellamy laid down the law at training about their flimsy defence, but he didn’t get the response he was after, with a horror-show 32 missed tackles.
“It’s hugely disappointing,” Bellamy said.
“We did a lot of work on our defence this week and we may as well have gone to the pub and had a couple of beers.”
Bellamy flagged a complete review, including of his own coaching performance, to try to determine why his team’s form had fallen off a cliff.
“There’s a lot of things going wrong so we need to have a good, hard look at ourselves,” he said.
“We’re all going to take responsibility, and if there’s people not doing their jobs properly well we need to make changes, that’s with staff as well.”
The Storm were ahead 14-12 when Nick Meaney converted Jack Howarth’s 23rd-minute try, but the Warriors turned the momentum soon after when they were gifted a try.
Hooker Tanah Boyd threw a pass that flew past six players, from both sides, and bounced, with Dallin Watene-Zelezniak scooping it up to score the first of his two tries for the night.
A late penalty strike by Boyd then put his team up by four points at halftime.
Melbourne’s second-half fightback almost immediately fell flat, with three Warriors tries in the first 11 minutes leaving the sell-out crowd silenced, with the Storm trailing 36-14.
The Warriors locked down Melbourne skipper Harry Grant, with the dummy-half only making 16 run metres for the match.
While they only added another 58th-minute penalty goal, the Warriors continued to out-muscle Melbourne with some superb goal-line defence in a statement performance.
Coach Andrew Webster was delighted to “get the monkey” off their backs in Melbourne.
“It’s been frustrating period where we haven’t won, so to give all the Warriors fans a smile and get that monkey off the back, it’s not a bad thing at all,” he said.
“Just really happy with the determination, lots of energy, lots of connection – it looked like a side that wanted to do it together.”
AAP