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It’s silly season. We’ve gone through the finals, the World Cup and the November 1 deadline after which, NRL players who are out of contract for 2024 can discuss terms with other clubs. With that in mind, we’re launching Smart Signings, our new series on who NRL clubs should be targeting to address their biggest weaknesses, using the players that are actually available to them.
It’s hard being good all the time. Melbourne’s record of being exceptionally good means that even the slightest blip is treated as a disaster.
It’s also hard when everyone wants you to lose, and plenty of people – mostly in the Sydney area, where all the rugby league media is – like to see the Storm suffer.
When they lost four on the spin in the middle of last year, it was like the sky was falling in on the great imperial project of Craig Bellamy.
It wasn’t actually a catastrophe at all, and it was pretty predictable: they had a load of players injured and a tough run of fixtures, as happens to a lot of teams. But with Melbourne, they just don’t lose. Right?
Well, I’m here to tell you that any team that changes its composition – especially in the backline – as much as the Storm did in the middle of last year is set to lose a lot of games.
Melbourne were actually the fourth best defensive side in the NRL, but that was a minor miracle given that they lost their best fullback for over half their games, one of their centres, Reimis Smith, played just nine times and their star wing recruit, Xavier Coates, got just 17, coming back pretty underdone for the final three of the year.
One of Bellamy’s greatest strengths over the years has been the so-called ‘next man up’ mentality that insulated them from such injury crises, but it can only go so far. Losing an Origin winger and replacing them with Grant Anderson will do that.
(Photo by Graham Denholm/Getty Images)
Tellingly, even when the Storm did lose, it took a good team to beat them. They remain the absolute kings of staying in the fight. Every side they lost to made the Finals, except for one night at Brookvale where they were so depleted that Jayden Nikorima got a game.
This off-season has been one of re-setting for the Storm. Despite Bellamy hinting at this being his last season, it looks like he’s cleaned house and set for the future by ditching an old guard and preparing ground for the new.
Over 500 games’ worth of Bromwich departs for the Dolphins, and they’re taking another 173 games of Felise Kaufusi with them. That’s conceivably three of their best pack of the last decade, goneskis.
It’s also three of their top five for minutes played in the forwards, with Felise and Kenny, in particular, rarely ever getting subbed off.
In comes Tariq Sims, who will be hoping that a change is as good as a rest given his decline from Origin levels to walking meme at the Dragons, plus Aaron Pene and Elie Katoa from the Warriors.
It doesn’t smack of an upgrade, though lots of rubbish players look rubbish right until the moment they meet the Bellamy system. Hopes are always high that they’ll make it work.
Tariq Sims. (Photo by Mark Kolbe/Getty Images)
A word of caution would be that Katoa, Pene and Sims all played substantially fewer minutes in their appearances in 2022. Pene was worth just 28 per game last year, Katoa was worth 41 and Sims 59.
There will have to be a lot of arithmetic done – or a few kilos lost – if they are to cover the engines of the bodies they lost – even factoring in the return of Christian Welch to full fitness.
He, and Trent Loiero, might be asked to cover a lot of slack in the middle, with Nelson Asofa-Solomona’s late season switch to the backrow being made permanent.
Brandon Smith is also out the door, though that probably won’t be a problem if it means more Harry Grant as undisputed first pick over the duration in the hooking role. Tyran Wishart will likely back him up.
Any team that starts with Grant in the 9, a combination of Cam Muster and Jahrome Highes in the halves and Ryan Papenhuyzen at the back are going to be good in attack.
The issue the Storm had in 2022 was keeping their best out there, and you’d have to suggest that in 2023, that luck will turn.
The back row rotation is not what it could be, but it’s hard to argue against letting three older, higher-earning players move on when given the option by Uncle Wayne and his Dolphins, and also quite hard to argue against letting one international hooker leave when you have another international hooker already on the cap.
On almost every metric, especially defensive ones, the Storm were exceptional in 2022 and they largely outperformed their base attacking metrics too, generating more line breaks and tries than their metres would predict.
The question, then, is if that output is sustainable.
Cameron Munster, Brandon Smith and Nelson Asofa-Solomona are dejected after the NRL Elimination Final loss to Canberra. (Photo by Daniel Pockett/Getty Images)
Deep-diving their attacking stats would suggest that it never was: they made 147 line breaks in 2022, but a full third of them were in just five games, total bash-ups of the Warriors, Knights, Dragons, Titans and late-season rubbish Broncos. Against good teams, it plummeted.
Part of that is personnel, because losing Ryan Papenhuyzen – worth three LBs per 80 on his own – will affect anyone, but it also speaks to a bit of the flat-track bully.
Beating bad teams is important: just ask Souths, who lost to the Tigers and Dragons, or the Roosters, who lost to the Bulldogs and Knights. Flip those results and both make the top four.
But come finals time, Melbourne’s attack fell away and points were their problem. From Round 1 to Round 9, they scored 59 tries, 6.55 per game. From then to the end of the year, they scored 62 in 16, or 3.8 per game – and ten came in one game, against the Broncos.
Or: they were worth 64 line breaks (7.1pg) through R9 and 83 for the rest of the season (5.1pg). So not only did attacking productivity drop, so did conversion. They were both creating fewer chances and icing fewer of the chances that they created.
Across the league, the average line break to try ratio is 0.83:1, with Parramatta top on 0.93:1. Between R1-9, the Storm were 0:91:1, but afterwards, they went 0.74:1. Efficiency-wise, they went from among the best to among the worst.
Again, you might say that they lost Papi, and undoubtedly, he is one of the best at converting breaks into tries and one of the best creative fullbacks too, both for himself and others.
But beyond him, Munster and Hughes also fell off a cliff creatively in the second half of the year. Honourable exception, by the way, for Harry Grant, who maintained all the way through.
You might be wondering what the great takeaway is from all this in terms of signings. It’s a fair point.
The argument I’ve made thus far is that the Storm were unsustainably good when they were good early in the year and would have likely regressed to the mean even if players had stayed fit.
But: they were also not as bad as they looked at other points, and would have probably done better in the back end had they been able to field a better team.
The secret sauce for 2023, as far as attack is concerned, is simply getting blokes on the field more frequently. Hardly revolutionary stuff, I know.
Juggling their middles, too, will be crucial, as they lose hundreds of games of experience and replace them with Tariq Sims, Christian Welch and, err, that’s it.
Harry Grant of the Storm scores a try. (Photo by Mark Nolan/Getty Images)
The trick that the Storm have pulled over the years is turning fringe guys into mainstays via Bellamy’s superb knack for clear, concise instructions and a functioning systematic whole.
You could see that working with Alec McDonald and Josh King last year, and to a lesser extent Loiero and Tepai Moeroa. Jack Howarth is likely to be the next cab off the rank, too, along with French-raised recruit Joe Chan, who arrives from Catalans.
But, historically, it has not worked in key position players, and again, Melbourne struggle there.
With Smith gone, their back-up hooker is Wishart, and that’s a huge gamble. Wishart is probably their back-up halfback too, with only Jayden Nikorima behind. Jonah Pezet, star of the NSW 19s Origin side, is in the top 30, but yet to debut.
A smart signing might be in that position, but experienced fill-ins are hard to come by.
Someone like Moses Mbye, a set and forget 14, would have been perfect, but a realistic option might be Matt Frawley, who has always been capable in the 7 jumper but never established himself as an NRL week-to-week player, or Adam Clune, who looks mile away from first grade at the Knights but, again, could flourish in a better system with better coaching.
The chaos merchant in me suggests the current Super League player of the year, Brodie Croft, but we’ve seen that movie before in Melbourne.
If last year taught us anything, too, it’s that the next in line in the OBs is also not at the required standard. Dean Ieremia and Grant Anderson all looked shonky, with only Marion Seve and the criminally-underrated Nick Meaney coming out with credit.
Again, the Storm might point to former All Blacks 7s player Will Warbrick, who undoubtedly would have debuted in 2022 had he not also been injured.
Available now on the market would be Mawene Hiroti at the Sharks, a dual threat back-rower and centre, or Braidon Burns, nowhere near the Bulldogs’ matchday squad but with more than 50 games of NRL spread across centre and wing. Both are better than Dean Ieremia and Grant Anderson, for sure.
The good news, though, is that if you’re getting Smart Signings recommendations in reserve positions, you’ve already won before you’ve started. Entering into his 20th year at the helm and with a 70% win/loss record, I doubt Craig Bellamy needs my help anyway. As ever, they’ll be fine.