By Melissa Woods
Heads are set to roll at Melbourne with coach Craig Bellamy intent on player changes after the Storm’s NRL season careered further off the rails with a record loss at AAMI Park.
The Storm were steamrolled 48-6 by a ruthless South Sydney, who ran in nine tries to one in their Anzac Day clash on Saturday to claim their first win in Melbourne.
In other matches on ANZAC Day, a change of coach did little for St George-Illawarra who were thumped 62-16 by the Sydney Roosters and the Warriors held on in a close match beating the Dolphins 20-18.
In Melbourne, the Storm didn’t make a single line-break until the 69th minute while the Rabbitohs made 14, only completed at 68 per cent, and made 14 errors.
Slumping to their sixth-straight loss for the first time on his watch, Bellamy said it was the “most embarrassed” he’d been in his football career, which tallies 613 matches as NRL coach and 150 as a Canberra player.
If Melbourne lose to the Dolphins in Brisbane next Friday night, it will equal the club’s worst ever losing streak, with Mark Murray overseeing seven losses in 2002 before he made way for Bellamy.
With just two wins so far, the club is also in danger of missing the finals for the first time since Bellamy took over, apart from 2010 when were unable to play for competition points due to salary cap-cheating yet still managed 14 victories.
Bellamy insisted there could be worse to come, saying he will make changes to the line-up despite having little experience to call on in the reserve grade squad.
The departure of Nelson Asofa-Solomona and injury and illness ruling out Eli Katoa and Tui Kamikamica has severely depleted their big man stocks while their backline, including superstar Cameron Munster, isn’t clicking.
“We might have to go downhill a little bit further, to be quite honest,” Bellamy said.
“At the end of the day, I’ve stuck with basically the same side the last six weeks and I think it’s time to make some changes.
“We haven’t got a whole heap of depth there, with first grade experience, but we’ll find a couple of guys that want to go out there and have a go so, that’s what we’ll do.
“I don’t know if starting again is the right term but that’s what it feels like at the moment – just cut it back to its bare bones and let’s build again.”
Bellamy was asked if he still had the dressing room, and the coach responded: “That’s a good point, I might not have”.
Skipper Harry Grant quickly interjected and said it was on the players to work harder to turn the season around, not the coach.
“Yeah, he does, that’s a silly question, you don’t need to ask him that,” Grant said.
“He’s a modest guy and he’s probably going to look to himself for these results, but at the end of the day, no-one works harder than Craig.
“You come into the club every morning and he’s in here working.”