It was good enough to defeat the North Queensland Cowboys 20-16 and extend the Melbourne Storm’s winning streak to an impressive 15 games.
But unimpressed coach Craig Bellamy warned his players they will be in for a serious reality check if they reproduce Friday night’s performance in September.
“We know we can play better and we’re going to have to do that or we’ll be making up the numbers at the end of the season,” Bellamy said.
“But I want to give some credit to the Cowboys, they played pretty well and it’s been a while since we’ve had as much pressure on us defensively as we did tonight to be quite honest.”
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The Storm led 10-0 early but were staring down the barrel of a major upset when Kyle Feldt scored in the 52nd minute to give the hosts a two-point lead.
Bellamy’s men restored order with two tries and survived a tight finish to maintain their winning streak and move two points clear of the Penrith Panthers at the top of the NRL ladder.
“It just looked like to me in the first-half we were looking for the easy options and it didn’t’ work,” Bellamy said.
“I thought the Cowboys played pretty well … defensively they were up in our face all night.
“But I just thought right from the start as soon as we got to 10-0 we were just looking for the easy way to do things.
“We know what works for us and we know it is hard work and I’d like to think that we know hard work matters but it looked like we either forgot about that or didn’t want to acknowledge that and we were just looking for the easy way.”
“… In saying that, it’s been a tough couple of weeks so there was always going to be a bit of fallout somewhere.”
Bellamy added of Ryan Papenhuyzen’s return after the star full-back played 34 minutes off the bench in his first game since suffering a concussion against the Dragons in Magic Round: “He was rusty and we probably expected that.
“We stuck to the plan that we had, we decided that we were going to play him when Brandon (Smith) needed a rest and it worked out about that time when he (Smith) came off for the HIA.
“We just wanted to give him 40 minutes at most tonight, just to get him back in, it’s been a difficult nine weeks ago, not just physically but also emotionally and mentally.
“In the early weeks it didn’t look like he was making much improvement at all but in the last few weeks he’s really brightened up.
“… It was nice for him to get out there and have a run, I thought he looked really rusty … some of his runs weren’t typical Papenhuyzen runs but that’s what we expected and we’re really happy now that he’s made that start.”
