Storm coach Craig Bellamy has slammed his side’s performance and questioned what “planet” Tui Kamikamica and Justin Olam were on.
The Melbourne pair both hit Manly halfback Daly Cherry-Evans late in the second half, spending 10 minutes on the sideline.
Their absence helped the Sea Eagles secure a hard-fought 18-8 victory to bounce back after a flogging at the hands of the reigning premiers in Round 6.
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Bellamy believes his side shot themselves in the foot and never allowed themselves into the contest, lamenting Olam and Kamikamica’s decisions to hit their opposing halfback late.
“To keep them to 18 points was probably a good effort, we just never game ourselves a chance to win the game,” Bellamy said in the post-match press conference.
“Especially our second half was really poor, we didn’t play too smart at all… I don’t know what planet they’re on, you just can’t do that these days.
“You can’t hit ball players and halves late with any force at all and that’s what it is and to do that, we played half of the second half with 12 men.
“That’s hard work and then when they had 12 men we couldn’t get out of our 20, like I said we didn’t play smart at all.
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“We’ve had two good weeks, we’ve been really good, thinking about our footy, but tonight we got what we deserved.”
Bellamy also refused to criticise the referee Adam Gee after he sent three players to the sin bin throughout the contest and also put five on report.
“I don’t want to discuss that, that’s not my business, at the end of the day there’s other people making the rules,” Bellamy said.
“That’s their job, my job is to coach the footy team.”
Melbourne skipper Christian Welch believes his side took a big step backwards.
The Storm went down to the Bulldogs in Round 2 and the Titans in Round 3, making consistent and sloppy errors to hand their opponents victory.
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Bellamy’s side bounced back in the following weeks with wins over the Tigers, Rabbitohs and Roosters, delivering complete performances.
Many pundits believed the Storm were back in contention for the title, but after more “stupid” mistakes, Welch explained it is back to the drawing board.
“It was pretty clunky I guess, but you come across a team with Daly Cherry-Evans, Tom Trbojevic, these classy players and we keep doing stupid shit,” Welch said.
“The competition’s too close, there’s too many good teams… two blokes in the bin, it’s really hard to beat these quality teams.
“You just put yourself up against it by doing really stupid things.
“It is really disappointing that we seem to have gone a bit backwards about how we have gone about our footy.”
