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In the sixteen years of their existence thus far, the Melbourne Storm have missed out on the finals only three time and one of those times was as a penalty enforced from the outside.
Think about that for a moment. Only twice has this club, through their on-field performances, not been there at the business end of the season.
Removing those finishes from the equation, the Storm average a third to fourth place finish on the ladder each year.
This is an amazing statistic. If the NRL were still using the old top-5 finals system, the Melbourne Storm would have still contested nine finals series.
However you look at it, the Melbourne Storm are an incredible rugby league club.
Such consistent success is sometimes easily ‘blamed’ on a number of factors including the security of their financial supporter News Limited and favourable treatment by the governing body.
But such sour grapes, and let us be honest here since that is what they are, hides the fact that the Storm have had to make do without that most natural of advantages that most other clubs have and that is history.
This history creates a tradition, it creates a support base and just as importantly, it creates a narrative, a story for the club’s members, fans and players.
The Melbourne Storm started with nothing. Absolute zero.
Well, not exactly zero. They did, and still do, have a powerful financial backer. And while the argument that they had money seems reasonable, on deeper inspection, it only serves to ask the question, why didn’t the older, more established clubs not have any? After all, they have had not years, but literally decades to get their houses in order.
Whatever side of the fence you stood with regards to the Super League war, it, at the very least, showed what can happen to clubs that do not move.
While it is of immense value to have a history, one cannot rest on it. A club needs to be able to read the environment around them, to adapt to the times. This is the only way to move forward and ensure your own survival. Past glories are a marketer’s dream and while they add to a club they are not the club. Only what a club does in the here and now is important.
The South Sydney Rabbitohs are the perfect example of a club that ought to never have had to wait over forty years to be serious contenders for a grand final. Think about that. Forty years in no-man’s land!
For a club to not have been able to take advantage of so much history, success and passion for so long is simply incredible. In a more critical mood, one might even label it incompetent.
Now, I don’t mean this to be a Souths bashing article since other clubs have also suffered bouts of incompetence. And, in any case, the Rabbitohs seem to have found their management mojo and are now firmly re-established in the modern world. The point is that it should not take so long for a club to find its feet.
The Melbourne Storm, if they have had any advantage over other clubs, is that from the very beginning they have existed now and not what they did twenty years ago.
There are other clubs who understand this concept, most notably Canterbury, but the results of a decade and a half tell us that Melbourne are the current masters of modern professionalism.
Let’s hope other clubs follow suit.
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