Craig Bellamy roast: Players’ hilarious stories of life with Melbourne Storm coach

Stolen shoes, dropped pants and BBQ sauce on ice cream — welcome to the roast of Craig Bellamy, where players reveal their real relationship with the super coach.

Craig Bellamy never starts a Melbourne training session without first tying his shorts in a double knot.

A routine born, they say, roughly 18 months ago.

Or right around the time Cameron Munster started pantsing him.

Yes, you read that right.

Rugby league’s most beautiful mind right now, and perhaps ever, a fella who on Thursday night becomes just the fourth coach in history to 500 games, will also devote time this week to the protection of his pants.

“Like to get him in front of everyone, too,” Munster cackles.

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Craig Bellamy poses ahead of his 500th game as Melbourne Storm coach. Picture: Darrian Traynor/Getty Images

Same as this larrikin Kangaroo will arrive to Storm HQ most mornings and, should he see the coach sporting anything close to a scowl, shout: “C’mon Craig, who pissed in your coffee today?”

Just as like clockwork, he will then remind Bellamy how he not only coaches NRL for a living, but receives roughly $1.4 million for the privilege.

“So pleeeease,” the superstar No.6 will plead, “stop putting out such negative vibes”.

Right before then taking another shot at Bellamy’s pants.

“Although he’s got the double knot going now,” Munster says. “So they’re tough to get down”.

Which poses some image, right?

Like imagine, say, Tom Brady ever diving at the strides of Super Bowl coach Bill Belichick. Or at Manchester United in the nineties, Becks dacking Sir Alex Ferguson.

But with Bellyache, things are different.

Not that many know.

No, all we know is what our eyeballs see through those 80 minutes in that Melbourne Storm coaching box.

When Bellamy goes absolutely Club Troppo, and not the 1990s Central Coast Leagues Club kind.

But at Storm HQ?

More than talking up his authenticity, consistency and unwavering loyalty, players also whisper about a coach whose pants haven’t only been pulled down over the years, but stolen.

With Munster not so much the greatest Bellamy antagonist, as simply the biggest right now.

Think the latest cog in a joking, pantsing machine that, not unlike the Bellamy empire itself, has been going since long before Brandon Smith was filling his coach’s kit bag with garden stones.

Or Cameron Smith filming as, wedged beneath a car, and completely flummoxed, this man with six Dally M gongs battled to change a tyre flattened, almost certainly, by that man holding the iPhone.

“Know what you’re doing Craig?” Smith cackles on the video that quickly went viral last year.

“Not really,” Bellamy barks back. “Well f …, I do know what I’m doing if I f…ing had something to f…ing do it with.”

Through 20 years now it has been this way.

With Bellamy, long before trying to keep his pants up, simply wanting to keep them, full stop.

Craig Bellamy. (Photo by Bradley Kanaris/Getty Images)

“Because he’s always been first in the gym,” says Cooper Cronk, referencing those famed 5am sessions where even today, aged 62, the coach still benches 80kg in repetitions of plenty.

Which of course, is a story well told.

But the one that isn’t?

That involves Bellamy, more than once over the years, emerging from the showers after said sessions to find his clothes missing.

Or shoes stolen.

Some days everything gone bar the fingerprints, had anyone thought to dust for them, of Storm winger Matt Geyer.

Same as a few years later, it was Greg Inglis who put his sneakers on the roof.

Or Matty King, his f-bomb count on the whiteboard.

While Smith once had his entire front row not only smuggle umbrellas into training, but then open them – pop, pop, pop — at Bellamy’s first cursing, spitting outburst.

Even at training sessions this week, Storm rake Harry Grant says it is Bellamy’s “massive overuse of hair gel” getting sledged. While among Storm staff, assistant Jason Ryles recalls touring with the Kangaroos in 2004, when Bellamy was assistant coach, and then arriving in Melbourne eight years later “to find him still wearing the same training shirt from that tour”.

“But Craig, he really cares for his staff,” insists Storm blue shirt Ryan Hinchcliffe. “Just not enough to shout us coffee.”

Craig Bellamy cuddles Ryan Hinchcliffe in 2015. Picture: Colleen Petch.

On away trips too, you should know players will wait until Bellamy, a famed sweet tooth, orders a bowl of vanilla ice cream after dinner, then switch out the chocolate topping for BBQ sauce.

Same as in video sessions, where he undoes some of the greatest teams the code has ever seen, Bellamy is also famous for muddling words, butchering sayings, even mispronouncing terribly the names of opponents.

All of which then leaves 20 men trying desperately not to giggle.

Aware the one who breaks first, well, they can expect the same shellacking Will Chambers copped during what will forever be known as ‘The Pineapple Speech’.

“Which was 09,” says Hinchcliffe, also Melbourne’s premiership backrower that same year.

“We were playing a team whose coach, and I won’t name him, but he spoke publicly in the lead-up about wanting to be a thorn in our side.

“So when we were only minutes away from playing, all ready to go and listening to Craig’s final speech, he finally, brings it up. Shouting: ‘They wanna be a thorn in our side? Righto, well, how about we be the pineapple up their arse’.”

Huh?

“Oh, there were eyes shooting everywhere,” Hinchcliffe cackles. “Everyone looking around like ‘Did he really just say pineapple up the arse?’

“I remember poor ‘ol Will Chambers, he couldn’t help himself. Started giggling.

“So that was it. He copped a spray.”

Coach Craig Bellamy shares a laugh with Jason Ryles. Picture: Colleen Petch.

Which brings us to another key point you need to know about Bellyache.

“He has a breaking point,” says Melbourne favourite Ryan Hoffman.

Cronk agrees.

Recalling how that day GI stole the shoes of his coach, then placed them on the roof, it saw Bellamy stride onto the training pitch barefoot and in a mood.

Still, they completed the session.

But afterwards?

“Craig goes ‘OK, backs, you were in gym this morning when the shoes went missing, so get on the tryline,” Cronk recalls.

“But we all just stood around. Thought Bellyache was joking …”

He wasn’t.

Immediately bellowing, “Get on that f…ing tryline”.

Which to a man, the entire Storm backline did.

Then, they started running Malcolms.

“But still initially, none of us said anything,” Cronk recalls.

Especially since given this wasn’t pre-season, but days out from a big game, Bellamy wouldn’t risk running them into the ground, right?

Wrong.

“So we just kept running,” Cronks says. “Five minutes became 10 minutes, then 20 minutes. Eventually I looked across to GI and said ‘mate, we need to get those shoes off the roof’.”

Which, of course, sends us tumbling down another rabbit hole entirely.

One where stories abound of Bellamy losing it, kicking chairs and delivering sprays so ferocious that one Storm forward — name withheld — silently copped his serve rather than interjecting to explain how, um, he was actually 18th man.

Craig Bellamy during his epic grand final blow-up in 2020. Picture: Fox Sports

Then there was the time a Storm player returned for pre-season heavy, having spilt off some moped during his Balinese holiday.

To which Bellamy, at first sighting, fired: “F … me, did you fall from the motorbike or f…ing swallow it?”

“So when you see his sprays on TV, yeah, they’re hilarious,” says retired prop George Rose. “But when it’s your forehead the spit is landing on? Mate, scares the shit out of you.”

Others agree.

Explaining how, in recent years, when the coach was at his darkest, a group of players would go front Aaron Bellamy — Craig’s son and Storm assistant — and ask if his missus might make a surprise Storm HQ visit with their bub, knowing on such days said grandchild was the only one capable of calming the coach,

RLPA boss Clint Newton, meanwhile, recalls how during his own playing days, Storm recruits were warned against ever looking toward the coach’s box after making an error.

“Although in one of my first games, when getting tackled, I dropped a bad pass out the back,” Newton starts. “A real hand grenade that Cam Smith, I think, dived on.

“Then as I’m getting off the ground, I just happen to look up and over my shoulder ...”

Big mistake.

“There’s Craig up in the box,” he continues, smile widening at the memory. “And he’s pointing right at me, spitting into the window.

“Honestly, even from that far away I could read his lips so clearly: ‘You f…ing tell Newto to f…ing put that f…ing pass away’.

“And that was all in a glance.”

Bellamy belting out the team song with Clint Newton and Cooper Cronk.

Still at halftime, the coach went again.

“And my old man, he can swear,” the retired backrower continues, referencing his legendary golfing dad, Jack Newton.

“I remember him on calls with Packer, Skase, Norman, James Erskine, and there was always somebody being told to get f…ed.

“But Belly, there’s nobody else like him.

“At his best, will even use f-bombs as a joining word”.

Better, no one is safe.

Even head trainer Alex Corvo has famously copped it from the coach who, on his angriest day, simply walked off from a Storm session.

“Said if you guys won’t train properly I don’t want to be here,” recalls Hoffman. “Then left.

“We all kept training of course, thought he’d be back.

“Then we watched his car disappear past the training field.”

But the Corvo incident?

That occurred in the opening weeks of a season where the performance coach, long regarded among rugby league’s best, was trialling some new drills which, for whatever reason, weren’t working.

Which first time they fell apart, had Bellamy frustrated.

Second time, dropping f-bombs.

But the third?

“Absolutely lost his shit,” laughs Todd Lowrie, a Storm backrower that year. “We’re out on the training field and he yells ‘f... Corvo, that’s it. You’re f…ing out’.”

Melbourne Storm coach Craig Bellamy and Cameron Munster talk during a Melbourne Storm training session. Picture: AAP Image/Scott Barbour

So what happened?

“Craig grabbed the cones and took over,” Lowrie says. “For the next week, he came up with all the conditioning drills himself.”

Any good?

“Absolutely shit,” the retired Stormer laughs. “They were old school and so easy, we actually had to keep pretending we were buggered.”

All of this too, while the game’s most experienced strength and conditioner stood around watching.

Which reminds Hoffman of his first time entering the Storm coaching box as a teenager in 2003, when Bellamy, in his inaugural season, would have the 18th man help tally stats.

“So I’m just about to walk in this day and when Craig puts his hand right into my chest,” the now Storm football operations manager recalls. “Says, ‘mate, just so you know, everything I say in here, it stays in here’.”

Which given Bellamy was just a handful of games into his NRL career, surprised the kid.

“But those next 80 minutes, for a 19-year-old it was something to behold,” Hoffman laughs. “I remember him asking some serious questions about the mental capabilities of several players.

“A few weeks later too, I was in there again and we were right next door to the Fox Sports commentary team.

“There was one point in the game where you could hear (commentator) Warren Smith say ‘Oh Craig Bellamy is going off next door to us’.

“And Craig, he shouts back ‘well, why the f … wouldn’t I be Warren?’.”

Of course, these days Hoffman now aids Bellamy from the bench, where messages are delivered, and first deciphered, by fellow Old Boy, Jason Ryles.

Asked the secret to relaying a Bellamy box spray, the Storm assistant stresses the importance of using a filter, even if it means occasionally means that headset ripped clean off your melon by the boss, who then spits instructions like dragonfire himself.

“But if I deliver every order word-for-word,” Ryles says, “we’re all going to jail”.

Craig Bellamy presents Ryan Hoffman with the match ball by Storm head coach Craig Bellamy after his last home and away match. (Photo by Michael Dodge/Getty Images)

Yet as for the first fella to really cop a serve?

That would be Jason Ferris.

The now Thirlmere Roosters coach who, during his time with Canberra Raiders, recalls Bellamy, as coach, blasting his Presidents Cup side all the way to a ‘95 premiership.

“And nobody copped it more than me,” Ferris recalls.

Which was a tad awkward.

“Because Belly actually lived at my place for two weeks,” he laughs

“At the time, I was 18. And he sold photocopiers.”

Photocopiers?

“Yeah, his little car even had Xerox stickers down the side,” Ferris laughs.

“And first night he stayed, I’ve whipped up this feed of sausages, potatoes, vegetables, had it all.

“But Craig just comes into the kitchen and says ‘f … mate, is that it?’

“I was so devastated. I’d even made gravy.”

But still, Ferris isn’t finished.

Wanting you to know how years later in 2010, while doing six months prison after a run of excessive drinking and gambling, it was this same coach who not only wrote to him, or offered to visit, but ensured that “at my lowest point, Craig Bellamy was there”.

Craig Bellamy wearing a hat given to him by Molly Meldrum at AAMI Park this week. Picture: David Geraghty.

Same as Cronk will tell you the coach’s greatest statistic isn’t his bagful of premierships — asterisks or otherwise — nor the countless finals appearances, win streaks, or even careers resurrected, but instead the number of player weddings he has attended.

“Because the bloke has coached over 200 of us,” Cronk says. “And when it comes to weddings, I know he’s been to a very high percentage of them.”

Indeed, when you track down Terry Reagan, saddling a horse for the second at Muswellbrook this particular Friday, he recalls a 1980s Canberra teammate who on the Murrays bus rides home from Sydney, always despised the younger players partying after a loss. “Absolutely hated the thought of young men not reaching their potential,” Reagan says. “Even way back then”.

While Jaiman Lowe, shifting containers at a port in Townsville, says his strongest Bellamy image is no spray, but a whispered conversation around midnight after the 2012 grand final.

A year in which Lowe, who not much earlier was plucked from behind a bar by Bellamy, played 15 games.

Continually in and out of first grade, before finally landing a bench spot for the game that matters most.

“And walking from the field that night, after we had all gone back out there for a few beers, we just sort’ve locked eyes,” Lowe says.

“I remember Craig putting an arm around me and saying ‘mate, you’ve been one of the hardest people to ever drop’. He said ‘because I always knew you were giving 100, per cent I absolutely dreaded those phone calls to you’.

“Looking back today, that’s special.”

Craig Bellamy with Cooper Cronk. (Photo by Scott Barbour/Getty Images)

Part of the Bellamy secret, too.

“Which could be science, could be art,” says retired prop Adam Woolnough, now back at Storm as Jersey Flegg coach. “But what I know is that by working hard for Craig Bellamy, it puts you in a position to be successful.”

Which is proved by a fella like Munster.

That knockabout No.6 who Bellamy has continually guided, and backed, through gambling and alcohol addiction, white powder headlines, all of it.

With Bellamy see, the past must never impact the present.

Which is why he so often walks from video meetings where he just gave some player a spray and, within two steps, throws an arm around them to not only inquire about family, but mean it.

Same as Bellamy will never, ever let blasts get personal.

Not after a loss, a shit pass or even when losing his pants.

So as for what the old bloke does say?

“Not much,” Munster says. “Just looks at me and says ‘Cameron, f … off’.”

Originally published as Craig Bellamy roast: Players’ hilarious stories of life with Melbourne Storm coach