Melbourne Storm coach Craig Bellamy admits he is unsure how to fill Cameron Smith’s giant shoes early next NRL season.
The Australian captain had ankle surgery last week and Bellamy hopes he will only miss the first two or three weeks of the season.
Slade Griffin and Ryan Hinchcliffe will share Smith’s role as hooker while he recovers, but Bellamy said the Storm would have to use trial games to figure out how that would work.
“I’m not sure about a competition,” Bellamy said of the pair filling in for Smith.
“They will certainly share the role, I don’t think we’d expect either of them to go 80 minutes.
“Exactly how we’ll do it … we’ll work that out for the trials.”
Bellamy also said last week that he will look at ways to lighten Smith’s workload once he returns to playing.
Smith’s foot is in a moon boot after the surgery, which Bellamy said appeared to have gone well.
“It will be a bit of a wait to see how he recovers and they are still sticking to the first diagnosis, where he will miss the first two or three weeks of the season,” Bellamy said on Tuesday.
“Because there is no footy on the moment he is not too concerned about it, but when the footy starts I think he will try and put the accelerator down.
“At the moment he knows he has to stay off it for four weeks and won’t jeopardise the injury this early.”
Smith is among several experienced Storm players who are yet to start pre-season training.
Bellamy said the younger players were coping well with a big workload.
“They’ve had a pretty tough pre-season, its probably been one of our toughest for three or four years,” Bellamy said.
“The squad has been really young, but I’m really happy with the way they’ve hung in and got through a lot of hard work.”
Bellamy added recruits Blake Green and Tom Learoyd-Lahrs were impressing early.
“They have good experience and they’ve been very, very handy at this time of year without our leadership group here,” he said.
Bellamy declined to comment on the NRL draw that was released on Monday.
It features a tough start for the Storm, but Bellamy said it did not seem right to be critical in the wake of the Martin Place siege.
“It seems to be a bit petty complaining about a draw after what happened last night in Sydney,” he said.
“We don’t have too much to complain about.”
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