{"id":600281,"date":"2026-04-11T15:26:36","date_gmt":"2026-04-11T15:26:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/600281\/"},"modified":"2026-04-11T15:26:36","modified_gmt":"2026-04-11T15:26:36","slug":"warriors-rock-storm-to-serve-up-fourth-straight-loss","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/600281\/","title":{"rendered":"Warriors rock Storm to serve up fourth straight loss"},"content":{"rendered":"

Craig Bellamy says his Melbourne team may as well have “gone to the pub” after his focus on defence failed to stop a Warriors onslaught at AAMI Park that ended a 12-year losing streak.<\/p>\n

A physical Warriors outfit ran over the top of Melbourne in their Saturday night clash to score six tries en route to a 38-14 victory, ending a 17-game hoodoo against their Victorian rivals.<\/p>\n

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It’s the first time since 2022 that traditional powerhouse Melbourne have lost four consecutive games, with the previous time way back in the 2015 season.<\/p>\n

The Storm paid the ultimate price for their poor discipline, with coach Bellamy left seething as the Warriors ran away with the match in the second half after leading 18-14 at halftime.<\/p>\n

The home side didn’t score a point after the 25th minute, with seven ruck infringements to three leaving them repeatedly back-pedalling.<\/p>\n

Melbourne also conceded seven penalties, with lock Trent Loiero, who was put on report, and second-rower Joe Chan the worst offenders.<\/p>\n

After their 40-point loss to Penrith last round Bellamy laid down the law at training about their flimsy defence, but he didn’t get the response he was after, with a horror-show 32 missed tackles.<\/p>\n

“It’s hugely disappointing,” Bellamy said.<\/p>\n

Warriors players celebrate a try during their win over the Storm.\u00a0Photo by Robert Cianflone\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

“We did a lot of work on our defence this week and we may as well have gone to the pub and had a couple of beers.”<\/p>\n

Bellamy flagged a complete review, including of his own coaching performance, to try to determine why his team’s form had fallen off a cliff.<\/p>\n

“There’s a lot of things going wrong so we need to have a good, hard look at ourselves,” he said.<\/p>\n

“We’re all going to take responsibility, and if there’s people not doing their jobs properly well we need to make changes, that’s with staff as well.”<\/p>\n

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The Storm were ahead 14-12 when Nick Meaney converted Jack Howarth’s 23rd-minute try, but the Warriors turned the momentum soon after when they were gifted a try.<\/p>\n

Hooker Tanah Boyd threw a pass that flew past six players, from both sides, and bounced, with Dallin Watene-Zelezniak scooping it up to score the first of his two tries for the night.<\/p>\n

A late penalty strike by Boyd then put his team up by four points at halftime.<\/p>\n

Melbourne’s second-half fightback almost immediately fell flat, with three Warriors tries in the first 11 minutes leaving the sell-out crowd silenced, with the Storm trailing 36-14.<\/p>\n

The Warriors locked down Melbourne skipper Harry Grant, with the dummy-half only making 16 run metres for the match.<\/p>\n

While they only added another 58th-minute penalty goal, the Warriors continued to out-muscle Melbourne with some superb goal-line defence in a statement performance.<\/p>\n

Coach Andrew Webster was delighted to “get the monkey” off their backs in Melbourne.<\/p>\n

“It’s been frustrating period where we haven’t won, so to give all the Warriors fans a smile and get that monkey off the back, it’s not a bad thing at all,” he said.<\/p>\n

“Just really happy with the determination, lots of energy, lots of connection – it looked like a side that wanted to do it together.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Craig Bellamy says his Melbourne team may as well have “gone to the pub” after his focus on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":600282,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[568],"tags":[64,63,761,762,158,85],"class_list":["post-600281","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\/600281","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=600281"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/600281\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/600282"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=600281"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=600281"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=600281"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}