{"id":642919,"date":"2026-05-01T14:48:11","date_gmt":"2026-05-01T14:48:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/642919\/"},"modified":"2026-05-01T14:48:11","modified_gmt":"2026-05-01T14:48:11","slug":"frank-ponissi-steps-in-for-craig-bellamy-press-conference-health-battle-melbourne-storm-vs-dolphins-harry-grant-round-8","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/642919\/","title":{"rendered":"Frank Ponissi steps in for Craig Bellamy press conference, health battle, Melbourne Storm vs Dolphins, Harry Grant, Round 8"},"content":{"rendered":"

Storm General Manager of Football Frank Ponissi stepped in for Craig Bellamy after his side slumped to a seventh straight loss amid his private health battle<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Bellamy was diagnosed with a neurodegenerative disorder during the week and Ponissi revealed the club gave him the press conference off ahead of the 28-10 loss to the Dolphins<\/a>. <\/p>\n

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<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is about Craig and it\u2019s been a big week for Craig,\u201d Ponissi said. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s been a couple of big weeks, so with respect, he was never coming in tonight win, lose or draw. <\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s been through a lot with his family, so I just think we gave him an opportunity just to not worry about tonight, but in terms of the way he coached tonight, you wouldn\u2019t think there was anything there that the last few days he\u2019s gone through. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s quite remarkable, so it\u2019s tough, but having just watched him, he\u2019s just purely about the team and trying to fix it, fix where we\u2019re going wrong and trying to get a win. <\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s already working on next week, and that\u2019s what we love about him.\u201d <\/p>\n

Ponissi revealed Bellamy has been taken aback by the support he has received from the whole rugby league and sporting community this week. <\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s overwhelmed by the support and so is his family,\u201d Ponissi said.<\/p>\n

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Harry Grant and Craig Bellamy.Source: FOX SPORTS<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s happened so quickly, the last 24, 48 hours, and he\u2019s just exceptionally grateful for all the support he\u2019s received, both from within the club and especially externally from lots of clubs and lots of people you wouldn\u2019t think you\u2019d hear from. <\/p>\n

\u201cAnd all around the world as well, so it\u2019s been quite remarkable, but he just wants to now just focus on coaching and focus on getting us back winning, and that\u2019s all his major focus is.\u201d <\/p>\n

Ponissi admitted the Storm players and Bellamy were frustrated they missed a golden opportunity to snap their losing streak. <\/p>\n

\u201cVery frustrated dressing room in there,\u201d Ponissi said.<\/p>\n

Craig Bellamy post match.Source: FOX SPORTS<\/p>\n

\u201cThe old cliche it\u2019s a game of two halves, we were as good as we have played in that first half, especially defensively, we had a lot of work to do on our try line and we had made an enormous amount of tackles on our try line, so to lead 10-0. <\/p>\n

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Woolf ‘really proud’ as Phins snap run | 03:54<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a great try, they scored just before half time, but at 10-4, we were very confident dressing room at half time and probably that decisive period is when they went down to 12 men and they handled that really well and we just didn\u2019t take our opportunities.\u201d <\/p>\n

Ponissi conceded the club is going through a range of emotions amid their historic seven game losing slump. <\/p>\n

\u201cNone of us happy with that, we\u2019re embarrassed, frustrated, disappointed, all those emotions rolled into one,\u201d Ponissi said. <\/p>\n

\u201cHarry, best to answer, but we\u2019ve just been in there for 10 minutes and leading the discussion and thinking about next week, about Wests Tigers already. <\/p>\n

\u201cHow can we get out of this? We took some positives out of tonight, but ultimately, you need to play for 80 minutes.\u201d <\/p>\n

From bad to worse for the Storm | 01:04<\/p>\n

Storm skipper Harry Grant admitted it has been an emotional week, but pledged that his players will honour Bellamy\u2019s wishes for privacy and work hard to help turn the club around. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s all part of the journey and it\u2019s a bit raw and it\u2019s a bit real, but at the end of the day, it\u2019s life and the cards have been dealt.\u201d Grant said. <\/p>\n

\u201cI think there\u2019s probably two parts of it, off the field and on the field and at the moment, we\u2019ve got to fix some stuff on the field as well to ease a little bit off the field, I think. <\/p>\n

\u201cBut at the end of the day, we\u2019re working hard at the club and having the right conversations. It\u2019s just about putting 80 minutes together to turn around.\u201d <\/p>\n

Storm suffer RECORD 7th straight loss | 06:09<\/p>\n

Grant praised Bellamy\u2019s selfless approach in putting the team first and wants to honour that as a captain and a playing group. <\/p>\n

\u201cI think it\u2019s a whole club matter and I think everyone would sort of understand that there\u2019s an element of respect in Craig\u2019s privacy and just getting on with business as usual like Craig\u2019s doing,\u201d Grant said. <\/p>\n

\u201cI think we can all kind of respect that as a rugby league community, wrap our arms around it and just really roll with what\u2019s next. <\/p>\n

‘The Greatest Influence on my Football’ | 00:38<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s looking forward to next week and really righting some wrongs and as a playing group, we just have got to really buy into that and back him up by working hard at training and transferring that into a performance. <\/p>\n

\u201cAnd I think we missed an opportunity there tonight. I think we put ourselves in a good position, but certainly missed an opportunity. And it\u2019s been a bit of the story, this little run of losing games.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Storm General Manager of Football Frank Ponissi stepped in for Craig Bellamy after his side slumped to a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":642920,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[568],"tags":[64,63,311269,311268,92633,11101,8089,33217,292388,8095,208777,779,4746,4466,761,762,158,10185,668,311267,311270,159,224018,85,53979,257037,15899,11388,4515],"class_list":["post-642919","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nrl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-club-matter","tag-confident-dressing-room","tag-contract-twist","tag-cooper-cronk","tag-craig-bellamy","tag-dressing-room","tag-game-losing","tag-harry-grant","tag-health-battle","tag-kristian-woolf","tag-mark-st-john","tag-melbourne-storm","tag-national-rugby-league","tag-nationalrugbyleague","tag-nrl","tag-playing-group","tag-press-conference","tag-private-health-battle","tag-record-seventh-straight-loss","tag-rugby-league","tag-rugby-league-community","tag-sports","tag-storm-skipper","tag-straight-loss","tag-tom-gilbert","tag-try-line","tag-wests-tigers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/642919","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=642919"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/642919\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/642920"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=642919"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=642919"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=642919"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}