Melbourne Storm head coach Craig Bellamy has slammed his team over their 'embarrassing' loss on Good Friday at the hands of the Dolphins.
Making the trek north to Brisbane, the Storm went into the contest as heavy favourites, and seemed to be following that script when they raced out to a 16 points to 2 lead, with early tries for Kane Bradley, Xavier Coates and Ryan Papenhuyzen.
The wheels quickly fell off for the men in purple though, with the NRL's most recent expansion club instead putting on points in a hurry, winding up with 40 unanswered ones.
A late Kane Bradley consolation try were the only second half points Melbourne could muster.
Bellamy was seemingly at a loss for words after the contest when asked to sum up his side's performance.
โYeah, f***, really disappointed. I can't remember coaching a Storm side that's been up 16-2 then had 40 in a row put on us. That's embarrassing,โ Bellamy said during his post-match press conference.
โBut hopefully we'll learn from it. It will be a tough review day. I'm not sure what else to say, it was really disappointing."
It's the second loss of the season for the Storm, and the second time their attack has failed to fire.
The first came without halfback Jahrome Hughes against the St George Illawarra Dragons as the club scored just one try despite having 46 tackles in the opposition 20-metre zone.
Melbourne's issue on Friday evening though was errors, with poor decision-making and poor execution allowing the Dolphins to run over the top of them.
Bellamy said it's a trend that the club have been winning games off their attack, and admitted it was a major concern.
โJahrome (Hughes) just made a good point in the dressing room that we've been winning our games off our attack, to be quite honest and today we had to stump up defensively because we kept turning the ball over and we just couldn't do it," the head coach said.
โIt's a big concern to rely just on your attack. We've been a little bit aware of it, that our defence hasn't been as good as we'd like it to be.
โIt's probably more individuals, to be honest, but I just have to have a look through it where we think the problems are and there are a few problems.
โAfter the game I thought perhaps it was complacency after getting that sort of start and just putting the slippers on.
โWe'll do our review and we need players coming in with reasons why tonight might have happened.โ
