Opinion
This is shaping as the biggest year of Cameron Munster’s career.
He burst onto the scene as a dynamic fullback, filling in for Billy Slater with such ease that there were questions as to where the greatest No. 1 in the Storm’s history would fit in when he returned from a long injury layover.
However, The Kid’s spot was under no genuine threat, so the kid made the move from custodian to five-eighth, and in 2017, Munster’s first full year wearing the No. 6, Melbourne won the grand final.
It was just the start for Munster, who at 27 has now won two grand finals, two State of Origin series, four caps for the Kangaroos (a jersey in which he has never lost a game), two Dally M Five-eighth of the Year awards and the Wally Lewis Medal for best player in the 2020 Origin series – for which he famously turned up to the first day of training hungover and reportedly asked if he could go back to partying with his Storm teammates for a few more days, the club having just secured that year’s premiership.
All of which has helped feed the Munster myth of being a bit of a party boy who knows when to turn it on – specifically, when he crosses the white line.
At this point I’ll fire Chekhov’s gun and pivot to the other white lines with which Munster has become associated.
Following the Storm’s 10-6 loss to the Panthers in last year’s finals, Munster, Brandon Smith and Chris Lewis were filmed in a Noosa hotel room with a mysterious white powder on the table. There was also footage of Munster dancing on a table with what looked to be a sappy of white powder tucked into his pants.
So what was going on? Well, apparently we’ll never know, because the Storm trio claimed they were so blind drunk that they don’t remember what the powder was.
No-one – no-one – believes that. The footage shows a group of young men in a state of intoxication, sure, but all three being so smashed they couldn’t remember? Please.
But the trio stuck to their guns, and without any further evidence to corroborate that the white powder in question was drugs, the NRL had a bit of an each-way bet, sanctioning them for bringing the game into disrepute. Each player received a monetary fine and a one-game suspension (which the Storm were only too happy to allow Smith to serve by not playing for the Maori All Stars rather than for the club whose duty of care he was under when he did the deed).
It was a lettuce-leaf slap.
(Photo by Bradley Kanaris/Getty Images)
But what Munster claims has given him the wake-up call he’s needed for about eight years – say, when he got sent home from a Kangaroos tour for getting in a fight with fellow Queenslander Ben Hunt, or when he got rubbed out of an Origin series because he broke curfew from the Emerging Maroons camp to get on the cans, or all those times he’s kicked people in the head – was the threat of finally being sacked by the Storm.
“The board were pretty much ready to rip my contract up and obviously it hit home, I have a beautiful partner at home and a baby on the way,” he told Fox Sports in an interview broadcast this week.
“I guess it’s easy when you have a job and income coming through you can support them. My income and support was up in the air and that really hit home.”
Not for nothing, but we have heard this from him before, saying after the Hunt incident “I was going to be sacked”.
“I won’t sugar coat it. After 2017 I was pretty much shown the door but Bellyache (Bellamy) showed faith in me,” he said, before promising, “I have taken a step back and changed my ways in everything that I have done.”
Munster is the boy who cried sacked – he’s always this close to having it all end, but somehow he survives, then plays mad footy for a year or so, and so the next time he’s a dickhead the club remember the trophies rather than the tears, and so he survives again.
Rinse and repeat.
So we’re right to be sceptical about his latest comeback, this latest “changed my ways in everything” Munster.
(Photo by Daniel Pockett/Getty Images)
But a lot are giving him the benefit of the doubt because this time around he actually spent a month in a rehab facility, has committed to 12 months off the booze as a condition of his ongoing employment at the Storm and has recently become a father.
All of which has him looking leaner and meaner than he has in a long time.
But you know what the real fear must be for Munster? His footy was a bit crap at the back-end of last year.
We waited for him to turn it on in the Origin series, like he had the previous year, but it never came and the Blues took back the shield.
And while he was part of a Melbourne Storm side that went on a record-equalling winning streak, when the whips were cracking, Munster again failed to step up. His team were sent packing the week before the grand final, letting slip an opportunity that Bellamy has since called “the most winnable competition we’ve had (a chance at) since I’ve been here”.
If Munster has got any more dickhead in him, he’s going to want to have another premiership to point to as well.
With Cameron Smith gone and Munster enjoying a seven-figure salary, it’s his job to win the big games.
And for the Melbourne Storm, there’s really only one big game.
Million Dollar Man series
A look at each club’s million-dollar man – the player broadly acknowledged to be taking up the largest individual chunk of the salary cap (even if they aren’t actually quite grossing seven figures).
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Best-case scenario
For all the ways I’ve sorta stuck the boot into Munster (it’s not nice, is it Cameron? Maybe we should all agree to stop kicking), I – and I suspect most of the rugby league community – want him to have finally put it all together.
That between rehab, the booze ban and the baby boy at home, he’s finally realised the difference between prankster and pinhead.
Of course, be careful what you wish for, because a fit, firing, focused Munster is the guy who will tear an opposition’s heart out in a matter of minutes.
And with the pain of last year’s Origin loss and arguably premature bow-out of the finals fuelling him, Munster could just go out there and obliterate teams.
Munster has the talent to be the best player in the game, and if he finally lives up to that promise, given the pieces around him, he could sweep the season – win another grand final and another Origin series and secure more than a few individual accolades along the way, including the Dally M.
(Photo by Bradley Kanaris/Getty Images)
Worst-case scenario
Salary-cap scandal aside, what is the worst result for the Storm under Craig Bellamy? Finals. That’s seriously as bad as it gets. And in the past seven seasons, the worst they’ve done is the prelim.
So the bronze medal in a field of 16 is the worst result they’ve had since 2014 (when they suffered the indignity of being knocked out in the qualifying final).
Evidence therefore suggests the worst-case scenario for Munster and his men is another prelim knockout.
However, this past off-season is perhaps the hardest the Storm have been hit since that 2010 season when they didn’t play for points.
The white-powder scandal was followed by a string of high-profile players signing to play elsewhere in 2023, Tui Kamikamica being stood down over assault charges, issues surrounding Nelson Asofa-Solomona’s vaccination status – oh, and worst of all, Brandon Smith going on a podcast and swearing.
It’s just been a very un-Storm few months.
All of which is to say their worst possible season could be different to recent versions thereof.
They won’t miss the eight, but if Munster can’t become the main man he needs to be, making the eight won’t make much of a difference.
Because not winning the title is Melbourne’s nightmare, and if Cameron Munster isn’t at the level he needs to be in September, that nightmare will come true.
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