Craig Bellamy is rarely lost for words. After the Melbourne Storm were thrashed 48-6 by South Sydney on Anzac Day at AAMI Park — a sixth straight defeat that has dragged the perennial NRL contenders into unfamiliar territory — the master coach found one anyway.
"Probably most embarrassed I've ever been in me life, to be quite honest," Bellamy told reporters in a brutally honest post-match press conference. "Play like that tonight, you know — and again, there's obviously few things I feel staff's doing wrong and I'm included in that. So obviously I ain't doing me job as well as I should be."
Bellamy did not duck the scale of the defeat. Asked whether the loss really hurt, he repeated himself for emphasis. "To come up with a performance like that — and the opposition played really well — but to come up with a performance like that and a lack of effort like that on Anzac Day is embarrassing. It's embarrassing. And yeah, I can't really say too much more than that."
The veteran coach, in his 23rd season with the Storm and a man whose career has been built on competitive losses rather than capitulations, admitted he had nothing to lean on for context. "Six losses in a row, I think we've lost six [out of] 12 or something like that," he said. "Some of those losses, you know, probably four points or whatever. Sometimes that's a bit unlucky. But as I say, it was downright embarrassing tonight."
The next admission was harder still. After six weeks of trusting the same group of players, Bellamy signalled wholesale change is coming — and acknowledged the cupboard behind them is bare. "I've stuck with basically the same side the last six weeks. I think it's time to… some changes," he said. Asked whether the Storm have the depth to absorb a reshuffle, he was direct: "No, no, we haven't really, to be quite honest. We haven't got a whole depth there, you know — 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."
Skipper Harry Grant tried to keep the focus internal. "We come here to play footy, compete, win — that's what we strive to do every week," he said. "A lot over the last little period, there's been games where we've been right in it. Sort of four points, six points, that we've lost by. And in previous years, we probably won those games. And yeah, tonight was just really disappointing. We give them the game that they wanted. South Sydney were just up for the contest, but we made it really easy for them. Turned over a lot of ball, cheap possession, and just didn't fight enough."
Grant also pushed back hard at any suggestion the playing group had stopped buying into Bellamy's program. "He's a modest guy and he's probably going to look to himself with these results, but at the end of the day, no one works harder than Craig. No one works harder than Craig. Comes into the club every morning and he's in here working."
When pundits suggested the changing rules of the 2026 NRL season had outpaced his side, Bellamy was dismissive. "Game hasn't changed that much. We got a problem whether it was the same rules last year or whatever. So yeah, no, it's not the rules."
Asked finally whether he could mount a case for the club to dig itself out of this hole, the man with three premierships and four minor premierships chose honesty over bravado. "That's what we plan to do. Go back to the start. So whether — you might ask me that in a month's time and I might be able to answer it. But at the moment, probably not."
A Storm rebuild from the bare bones, mid-season, on Bellamy's watch. That sentence alone tells the story of how far the eight-time grand finalists have fallen.
