Craig Bellamy has revealed how a sit-down meeting with Melbourne’s new ‘big four’ has put the Storm on the cusp of marking a fresh era in the club’s history and ending Penrith’s stranglehold on the NRL premiership.
The Storm return to their first grand final since the 2020 decider when fullback Ryan Papenhuyzen stole the show and Cameron Smith signed off with a premiership as Melbourne knocked off the Panthers.
In the time since Smith followed Billy Slater and Cooper Cronk into TV punditry, the Storm have fallen short and Penrith have risen to take their mantle as the game’s premier club with three-straight premierships.
Despite Penrith’s success-laden run, Panthers coach Ivan Cleary still humbly refers to Melbourne as “the benchmark” in the NRL.
But after some relatively lean years, Bellamy heads into his 10th grand final with a side believing they can mark the start of a successful post-Smith era against a Penrith team aiming to become the first since St George (1956-1966) to claim four consecutive titles.
It sets up a grand final for the ages.
Like Melbourne’s champion sides of old, the 2024 iteration is underpinned by workaholic forwards and a spine that can make magic happen.
Halfback Jahrome Hughes won the Dally M Medal earlier this week and hooker Harry Grant has begun to add more craft to his dummy-half play.
Crucially, too, five-eighth Cameron Munster and Papenhuyzen look back to their best after wretched runs with injury over the last two seasons.
They got a reminder of what they could achieve when after an unconvincing 28-16 win over South Sydney in round 23, Bellamy sat his ‘big four’ down for a heart to heart.
“(I said) we need you guys to go above and beyond what we usually do or what we’ve expected to do if we’re going to have success this year,” Bellamy said.
“We can wait until next year, but no one wants to do that. Let’s do it now.
“It’s not all physical, it’s about talking about it and watching a bit of vision together. It was about putting a bit more time and effort in, and then going from there.”
Remarkably, Sunday’s grand final at Accor Stadium will just be the 20th time the quartet of Papenhuyzen, Grant, Munster and Hughes have played together at NRL level.
Grant said the meeting with Bellamy went a big way to explaining the Storm’s added attacking spark at the end of the year, their preliminary final win over the Roosters highlighting the synergy between their awesome foursome.
“Sometimes you feel things and you assume things,” Grant said.
“But that conversation just cleared a few things up for each other, and set us on the straight and narrow for the back end of the year, which was really important at that time.”
Melbourne will begin the grand final as slight favourites even accounting for Penrith’s experience of appearing in five straight deciders and the absence of Nelson Asofa-Solomona due to suspension.
Sunday’s grand final (7.30pm kick-off) will be the final Panthers game for prop James Fisher-Harris and five-eighth Jarome Luai.
“If there is any sort of that energy where it’s my last year amongst the group then I want this to be a positive one,” Luai said.
“You never really take it lightly, the effort and the achievement it is to be here.
“But between winning and losing there’s a big difference on how you look at your season, so I really want to win this one.”
Written by: George Clarke © AAP
