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Craig Bellamy delivered his biggest halftime serve of the NRL season and got the response he was after with Melbourne overcoming a sloppy start to race away with a crushing 40-14 victory over Cronulla.
Cronulla took an 8-6 lead into the break after a dominant opening, with the Storm looking below par coming off a five-day turnaround.
Making uncustomary errors with a completion rate of just 50 per cent, Melbourne’s only first-half try was a 90-metre effort by speedster Josh Addo-Carr against the run of play.
Bellamy said the team needed to smarten up.
“It was the biggest one they’ve had for a bit,” Bellamy said of his halftime spray.
“I don’t know whether they needed to hear it but I needed to say it.
“There was a couple of things we needed to fix up and I wanted to make that point pretty strongly and they responded in real good fashion.
“We didn’t build any pressure at all in the first half and in the second we did and that about sums it up.”
(Photo by Robert Prezioso/Getty Images)
The team clicked into gear and put three tries on the board within ten minutes of the break and it was effectively game over, finishing with a total haul of eight.
The Sharks at least had some good news with skipper Wade Graham, who was returning from a two-week concussion lay-off, passing a late HIA test. He told AAP he had stayed down to have his cheekbone checked by the trainer and following protocol was then forced off for the test despite not having any symptoms.
Prop Braden Hamlin-Uele, who made an impact off the bench, suffered a suspected syndesmosis injury.
With Will Chambers, who played 215 games for Melbourne, lining up for his first NRL game for Cronulla, the Sharks started strongly.
They were unlucky to have a Connor Tracey try called back with Chad Townsend’s long cut-out pass to the winger called forward.
And ten minutes later Tracey was held up over line by a desperate tackle from Storm halfback Jahrome Hughes.
After Addo-Carr capitalised on a Shaun Johnson error, the Sharks hit the lead when edge forward Briton Nikora steamed to the line with playmaker Johnson this time producing the goods.
But the second-half was one-way traffic with Melbourne winger Reimis Smith collecting a hat trick before Tracey was finally rewarded with a 79th-minute try in the corner.
In his first start at hooker for the Storm, Harry Grant shrugged off off a first-half dislocated finger and a sternum injury to have three try assists.
Cronulla coach Josh Hannay said his team felt in control at halftime, but then the wheels fell off.
“Against good teams you can’t make it easy for them,” Hannay said.
“In the second half when it started to snowball it really snowballed and when Melbourne are on their front foot they are a handful.”
© AAP
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