{"id":570762,"date":"2026-03-28T21:45:12","date_gmt":"2026-03-28T21:45:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/570762\/"},"modified":"2026-03-28T21:45:12","modified_gmt":"2026-03-28T21:45:12","slug":"nrl-news-2026-craig-bellamy-bristles-about-coughing-up-leads-after-melbourne-storm-defeat-to-north-queensland-cowboys","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/570762\/","title":{"rendered":"NRL news 2026 | Craig Bellamy bristles about coughing up leads after Melbourne Storm defeat to North Queensland Cowboys"},"content":{"rendered":"

Craig Bellamy<\/a> could not hide his frustrations after witnessing the Storm<\/a> blow yet another comfortable lead, in what has been a mixed start to the season.<\/p>\n

Melbourne were leading by six points at half time against the Cowboys in Townsville on Saturday<\/a> before a late resurgence by the latter turned the game on its head. <\/p>\n

The hosts crossed for three consecutive tries in six minutes to steal a 28-24 victory, following a similar path to that of the Broncos just one week ago<\/a>. Only in that match against the reigning premiers, Melbourne led 16-0 at half time.<\/p>\n

READ MORE: The ‘tricky situation’ facing Foran in Manly hot seat<\/a><\/p>\n

READ MORE: AFL make decision on grand final after ‘mixed reviews’<\/a><\/p>\n

READ MORE: Kennedy stuns Gout again in blockbuster 200m sprint<\/a><\/p>\n

The disappointment of losing the match was only amplified by the fact North Queensland stole the victory in the final minutes by exploiting the Storm’s defence.<\/p>\n

That was never going to sit well with Bellamy, especially not considering his team have suffered back-to-back losses following two big wins to open the season.<\/p>\n

\"Craig<\/p>\n

Craig Bellamy prepares to speak to media post-game.\u00a0NRL<\/p>\n

“I’m just frustrated,” Bellamy told reporters post-match.<\/p>\n

“The last two games were won after us having good leads … That’s the frustrating thing.<\/p>\n

“Why? We all have a different opinion – but you do have to give the opposition credit. In both second halves, last week and this week, they played really well.<\/p>\n

“But that pattern there – we just don’t want that to keep going. We need to try work it out or get a little formula where that hopefully doesn’t happen too often. It’s a worry.<\/p>\n

“Hopefully we can get some honesty from the players (about this).”<\/p>\n

Watch the 2026 NRL season live and free on Nine and 9Now<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In both the round three and four matches, Melbourne made uncharacteristic errors that proved costly, though both times they had fewer errors than their rivals.<\/p>\n

However, the timing of those errors punished Melbourne.<\/p>\n

Two kick-off errors resulted in tries for the Cowboys on Saturday.<\/p>\n

“Errors are one thing … but it’s the lack of willingness in contact that is concerning me a little bit,” he said.<\/p>\n

Harry Grant added: “We’ve just got to clean up our act.<\/p>\n

“We have to be willing to dig deep and defend in those periods of time.”<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Harry Grant.\u00a0Getty<\/p>\n

Grant took accountability for missing three conversion attempts.<\/p>\n

Typically Nick Meaney would hold that responsibility, but Grant was happy to learn what standards must be met by a player to be able to step into that role.<\/p>\n

“Maybe if I kicked goals we would’ve won,” he said.<\/p>\n

“We sort of realised in the pre-season that there’s not much back-up (behind Meaney), so I had to do a little bit, but it’s still a work in progress.”<\/p>\n

Melbourne now turn their attention to a clash with the Panthers – the only team yet to be defeated after four rounds.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Craig Bellamy could not hide his frustrations after witnessing the Storm blow yet another comfortable lead, in what…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":570763,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[568],"tags":[64,63,761,762,158,85],"class_list":["post-570762","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nrl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-national-rugby-league","tag-nationalrugbyleague","tag-nrl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/570762","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=570762"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/570762\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/570763"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=570762"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=570762"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=570762"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}