And in attack, it has been. Melbourne has looked, if anything, better with the Victorian product who is now 23 years of age at the back.<\/p>\n
You can totally understand why the Storm moved heaven and earth to re-sign him and didn’t go to the market looking for a replacement when Papenhuyzen first spent all that time out injured, and then decided at the end of last year that enough was enough.<\/p>\n
But rugby league games are not won in attack only.<\/p>\n
They can be, but it’s a strategy fraught with inconsistency and risk.<\/p>\n
Melbourne, over the years, has built its game on defence. You only need to remember what Billy Slater<\/a> did. He may be the best defensive fullback the game has ever seen, in addition to being the best attacking version.<\/p>\n There is no surprise Reece Walsh<\/a> has picked up his game at that end of the park after working closely with Slater in Queensland State of Origin<\/a> camp.<\/p>\n Papenhuyzen<\/a> was pretty good at defence too, both individually in his positioning and skillset, and in communication with his teammates.<\/p>\n But as yet, that has not carried over to Sua Fa’alogo<\/a>, who has missed more tackles than he has made so far this year.<\/p>\n The Storm have more issues than just a young fullback of course – they have an entirely new back-row, including the best in the game Eliesa Katoa<\/a> missing, while Shawn Blore<\/a> is injured, and their outside backs have also lacked through injury.<\/p>\n But the excuses don’t fly with Bellamy, and the attention this week will be squarely on their fullback after Melbourne copped 50 points for the first time since 2003 at the hands of the high-flying Penrith Panthers<\/a>.<\/p>\n It was Melbourne’s third straight loss, and the man they call “Bellyache” didn’t pull any punches after fulltime, threatening his players with reserve grade<\/a> stints unless they start hardening up in defence.<\/p>\n Bellamy said it isn’t rocket science, but the Storm sure made it look like it on Friday evening.<\/p>\n Penrith scored nine tries in front of almost 20,000 fans at CommBank Stadium, and Fa’alogo was defensively involved in plenty of the lapses for the Storm.<\/p>\n He can be excused for the first try to Liam Martin<\/a> after the ball pin balled around off a kick, although he was still probably out of position, while the second try to Freddy Lussick<\/a> out of dummy half was exceptionally soft through three, but Fa’alogo didn’t react nearly quick enough on the goal line.<\/p>\n Penrith’s third try for Thomas Jenkins<\/a> was a two-on-one, so again, Fa’alogo can be excused while the fourth was for Nathan Cleary<\/a> against the grain, with Fa’alogo well out of position.<\/p>\n The last before halftime came to Casey McLean<\/a> with Fa’alogo missing a one-on-one tackle. In between all of that it was clear there were other times Fa’alogo was out of position, while Melbourne’s defensive line just wasn’t in shape throughout the game.<\/p>\n Shortly after halftime, Fa’alogo got out-jumped by Brian To’o<\/a> – not exactly a noted skill of the barnstorming Penrith winger.<\/p>\n Fa’alogo then overran Luke Garner’s telegraphed line for the next try and as a result, the Penrith second-rower scored without a hand being put on him.<\/p>\n Dylan Edwards’ try to go past 40 can’t be pinned on Fa’alogo in a three-on-one situation, while the last try came off a cross-field kick and again can’t be put on the fullback.<\/p>\n This may all be a little simplistic, sure, suggesting so many tries were down to Fa’alogo, but the bottom line is that other fullbacks would have found a way to limit the number of four-pointers scored against them, both individually and through the communication of the rest of the team.<\/p>\n Melbourne certainly has other issues, but right now, Fa’alogo’s defence is a major headache for the Storm.<\/p>\n They can’t simply hope to rock up and out-score everybody, as they did through the first two rounds against the Parramatta Eels<\/a> and last-placed St George Illawarra Dragons<\/a>.<\/p>\n Friday night is not the first time the fullback has struggled to get his defensive game right, and given he essentially won the Round 2 encounter single-handidly, he is going to have chances to get it right.<\/p>\n But it doesn’t take a genius to work out Bellamy was threatening everybody with his reserve grade message after Friday night’s loss.<\/p>\n Fa’alogo needs to find a way to improve his defence quick-smart.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Seven tries in four games, 204 metres per game, six line breaks, two try assists and 27 tackle…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":363029,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[111,139,69,213],"class_list":["post-363028","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/363028","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=363028"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/363028\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/363029"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=363028"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=363028"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=363028"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"NRL](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/GettyImages-2268748432-scaled.jpg.webp.webp\"\/)
<\/p>\n