NRL: As the Melbourne Storm reach their first Grand Final since Cameron Smiths retirement, coach Craig Bellamy believes there is a new era at the club.
Nerissa Jayasingha can remember with vivid detail the moment she burst into tears when attending her first rugby league match in Melbourne at the MCG.
While the couple support AFL teams with a hatred for each other in Essendon and Hawthorn, they found common ground early in their relationship with their love for the Storm. “I mean with the AFL, it feels very much like they are the team and everyone else is the fans. It just feels like the players integrate with the fan base much more.
“It is pretty electric here at AAMI Park when it is a full house, or when we have plenty of purple in there cheering us on, which we have had all season,” he said recently. Aussie rules is played to the south and west, while the north-east of the line is rugby league country. That line has weakened but the broader popularity of the two codes in the regions remains the same.
Under the on-field stewardship of Chris Anderson as coach and Glenn Lazarus as captain, they clinched the NRL premiership cup a year later, much to the dismay of northern fans. The Sideridis family at the Melbourne Storm open training session before the team heads to Sydney for the NRL Grand Final this weekend. Picture: Andrew HenshawMost importantly, the ethos surrounding fan engagement remains a core tenet for the club.
After the Covid-riddled seasons of 2020 and 2021, the Storm rewarded the fan base which had supported them by offering a free membership the following season. The Storm has not got that history to lean on, nor is the club aligned with a suburb given it stands for the broader city of Melbourne and state of Victoria.
The pair are future Immortals and left an indelible mark on Melbourne during their tenures. Not far from them stands the Storm office, with the array of premiership cups the club has won over the past quarter-century clearly visible from the concourse of AAMI Stadium. He points to the motto of the current players standing in the “Watch Tower” protecting the “Storm Village” that so many have worked to build over the past quarter-century.
The plug aside, a year ago they had the good fortune to spend a few hours with Craig Bellamy and long-serving general manager Frank Ponissi after winning a competition. “He said, ‘Everyone talks about culture, but it’s not about culture. It’s about how we do things. If you want to call it culture, so be it, but that’s not what we go out and say. It is about what we do.’”
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