{"id":821043,"date":"2026-07-24T14:45:12","date_gmt":"2026-07-24T14:45:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/821043\/"},"modified":"2026-07-24T14:45:12","modified_gmt":"2026-07-24T14:45:12","slug":"nrl-news-2026-melbourne-storm-coach-craig-bellamy-on-finals-chances-after-loss-to-south-sydney-rabbitohs-press-conference-video","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/821043\/","title":{"rendered":"NRL news 2026: Melbourne Storm coach Craig Bellamy on finals chances after loss to South Sydney Rabbitohs | Press conference video"},"content":{"rendered":"

It was put to Craig Bellamy<\/a> after Friday night\u2019s loss<\/a> to South Sydney<\/a> that Melbourne<\/a> remained \u201cmathematically a chance\u201d to qualify for finals football.<\/p>\n

The Storm coach replied with a smirk.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Craig Bellamy and Josh King speak to the press after Friday night\u2019s loss.\u00a0Nine.<\/p>\n

\u201cUsing that word \u2018mathematically\u2019, you\u2019re in trouble,\u201d Bellamy said.<\/p>\n

The Storm remain two wins outside the top eight after going down 28-26 in a seesawing thriller at Accor Stadium.<\/p>\n

If North Queensland beat Brisbane in Townsville on Saturday night, Melbourne will drop to three wins outside the top eight.<\/p>\n

Five games and a bye await Melbourne, who have only failed to reach finals football once since Bellamy arrived in 2003. That was in 2010, when the Storm had their premiership points stripped because of the salary cap rort.<\/p>\n

Melbourne\u2019s woes are compounded by the loss of captain and champion hooker Harry Grant<\/a>, who suffered a seemingly bad hamstring injury on Friday night.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith complete honesty, I haven\u2019t sat down, had a look at it [the ladder] and worked out if we win this or win that, or if they lose this or whatever, [what will happen]. I just haven\u2019t looked at that,\u201d Bellamy added.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll I\u2019m concerned about is what we\u2019re doing this week, reviewing that [game against South Sydney], and then what we\u2019re doing next week. So, it\u2019ll be what it\u2019ll be.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know whether we can still make it, but I imagine some of it will depend on other results. We\u2019re not in control of that, so we\u2019re not going to concern ourselves with it.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe just need to start defending better \u2013 that\u2019s all it comes down to. And then, if we do make it or we don\u2019t make it, so be it. But that\u2019s the area we\u2019re going to look at now.\u201d<\/p>\n

Melbourne will face Canterbury and Manly in their next two games.<\/p>\n

They will then have a bye, before finishing their regular-season campaign against Penrith, Brisbane and Cronulla.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It was put to Craig Bellamy after Friday night\u2019s loss to South Sydney that Melbourne remained \u201cmathematically a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":821044,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[568],"tags":[64,63,761,762,158,85],"class_list":["post-821043","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\/821043","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=821043"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/821043\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/821044"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=821043"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=821043"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=821043"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}