“Munster Shines in Return, but Bellamy Calls for Improvement Despite Storm’s Dominant Win”
The Melbourne Storm dominated the Parramatta Eels with a 32-14 victory, as Cameron Munster successfully returned from a two-month groin injury absence, playing 52 minutes off the bench.
However, coach Craig Bellamy was not entirely satisfied with the performance, noting that the Storm will need to improve significantly to compete for the NRL premiership. Despite the win, Melbourne only completed 77% of their sets, made 13 errors, and allowed the Eels to have 55% of possession.
Bellamy highlighted the disparity in play-the-balls inside the 20-metre zone, with Parramatta having 41 compared to Melbourne’s two. While he praised the team’s defensive efforts, he was frustrated with their ball-handling issues. Bellamy remarked, “By our stats it was 46-2 (play-the-balls inside the 20).
If someone told you that before a game, you’d think the other side would have won. We backed that up good with our defence but we were just really untidy coming out of our own end at the start of both halves. We didn’t do it well in the first half and we were aware of it in the second half, but we were probably worse in the second half.
They had a whole heap of field position on us so if you look on the bright side we defended that well, but you’re not going to get away with that too often if it gets repeated.”
Despite not being at their best, the Storm remain six points clear atop the NRL ladder. With Munster back in the halves alongside Jahrome Hughes, the team is expected to grow even stronger. Bellamy commented on Munster’s return, “We didn’t expect him to go setting up tries or running 100 metres to score tries. Obviously his match fitness is not great. We just wanted to ease him back in and get his timing right.”