Melbourne did not provide any further details of the diagnosis.<\/p>\n
Stuart and Bellamy are two of the NRL’s closest coaches, having played for the Raiders in the late 80s and early 90s, including the 1990 grand final win over Penrith.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Ricky Stuart and Craig Bellamy talk during an Australian Kangaroos training session at Olympic Park in 2006. (Getty Images: Aaron Francis)<\/p>\n
Their friendship has continued to today, with the pair linking up most recently when the Raiders beat the Storm 26-22 on April 17.<\/p>\n
Before their round seven clash, Stuart declared that Bellamy is the best coach in the modern era and that he holds him in high regard.<\/p>\n
When asked whether he was aware of his friend’s situation, Stuart said he knew about Bellamy’s condition about three or four weeks ago.<\/p>\n
“I know he’s getting very good advice (and) got good people around him \u2026 in Melbourne,” Stuart said.<\/p>\n
“He’s got a beautiful family, so it’s now time for Craig to really care about Craig and put himself first.”<\/p>\n
In February, Bellamy signed a contract with the Storm until the end of the 2028 season.<\/p>\n
The 66-year-old has coached 614 NRL games and boasts a win rate of almost 70 per cent, while he also played 150 matches for Canberra.<\/p>\n
Melbourne is enduring a horror season, dropping six successive matches for the first time since Bellamy took over as coach in 2003.<\/p>\n
A seventh-straight loss in Brisbane tonight to the Dolphins would equal the all-time club record set in 2002.<\/p>\n
AAP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Canberra coach Ricky Stuart has thrown his support behind his good friend Craig Bellamy after the Melbourne mentor…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":641894,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[64,63,4532,8089,4466,158,7291,159,85],"class_list":["post-641893","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-canberra-raiders","tag-craig-bellamy","tag-melbourne-storm","tag-nrl","tag-ricky-stuart","tag-rugby-league","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/641893","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=641893"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/641893\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/641894"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=641893"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=641893"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=641893"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}