So he signed with the Storm for another tour,although,as he said,“Eight weeks ago,I was gone”. It’s the off-field issues that get to him. Like Kilgore,it’s the “greatcoats on,greatcoats off” contradictory and confusing orders from the top brass which frustrate him.
He recognised the problem with the ARL Commission’s six-again innovation before it was implemented:teams would deliberately breach on the early tackles when the attack was anchored near its posts. The result was a yawning gap between the top and bottom teams,and one-sided scorelines in 2020-21.
Eventually,the ARLC changed the rule to penalise teams on the first and second tackles for offside and ruck breaches,allowing the poorer teams to escape their territory. But Bellamy was also aware of the agenda in the introduction of the rule:to punish the so-called scourge of wrestling,of which the Storm was perceived to be chief culprit. But,to the frustration of a cabal of powerbrokers,the Storm won the 2020 premiership and lost the preliminary final in 2021 only after 18 months of stir-crazy lockdown in Queensland.
Stories accusing the Storm of grapple tackles appeared with suchGroundhog Day regularity,Bellamy once quipped,“It must be semi-final time”. It must be particularly galling for Bellamy,a man so devoid of duplicity,that some of his fellow coaches would seed these stories in the media.
The negative stories diminished with the Storm’s collapse towards the end of last season,and the NRL has struck a commendable balance between attack and defence which is difficult for any team to exploit.
When he extended his contract about a decade ago,Bellamy said,“the emotional rope[with his players] is too hard to cut”.
Craig Bellamy has always had a strong bond with his players at the Storm.Credit:NRL Photos
It still is,with a new generation of players who call him “Bellsa”,rather than the earlier Bellyache,encouraging him to re-sign.
It helps to go around again after years of losing players he developed from raw 18-year-olds to internationals. Next year will be the first where the Storm begin a season without having lost a single player they desperately wanted to keep.
Honesty and hard work are the bedrock values of his NSW central-west hometown,Portland where his father died in a quarry accident.
At the time,his neighbour phoned him at work in Queanbeyan to warn him of “bad news”,suggesting he sit down.
“There’s no seat here,mate,” he replied,even being honest before the tragic news he suspected was coming.
Portland had an indelible effect on him,particularly for its working-class ethos of hard labour being a reward in itself.
He spent the day after the Broncos match with four of his hometown mates,a couple of whom had rarely left Portland.
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Their visit helped distract him after weeks of being,as he said,“confused” about the future. But,to quote one of his favourite expressions,“at the end of day”,he couldn’t see the end of the football day.
It’s the lure of the linament,the exhausted,euphoric warriors in the beer-soaked dressing room after a come-from-behind win. It’s not the smell of napalm but it is similarly intoxicating and redolent of the line which follows Kilgore’s most famous one:“The smell ... smelled like... victory.”
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