Craig Bellamy’s life in the belly of the beast of rugby league

To understand the making of Craig Bellamy as a coach, you must sift through the different layers of his life, like archaeologists do. His evolution as long-term leader of the Melbourne Storm, particularly in a sport still bound to its working-class roots, makes eminent sense in retrospect.

Go back to his primary school days when he rode his bike through the brutal winters of the NSW central west town of Portland to snare rabbits to sell skins to buy football boots. Or his secondary school days when the siren sounded at the local quarry, signalling a detonation and the need to stay inside as rocks fell on the classroom roof.

By age 16, he had won a first grade premiership with neighbouring Oberon and later played for various bush teams. His boyhood dream of playing for the Dragons was dashed when he didn’t make the cut. Dig closer to the surface to his time with the Canberra Raiders and, while he played 148 top grade games, Bellamy was often the one sent to represent the club at official end-of-season functions while clubmates Laurie Daley and Mal Meninga prepared for the big games.

It’s no surprise, therefore, that humility is his enduring quality in a code where big-headedness is a crime. He is also pathologically honest. Consider the day, aged 20, he received a phonecall from Portland while working as an electrician at Queanbeyan Leagues Club. The caller’s first words were to tell him to sit down. His response? “There’s no chairs here, mate.” His father Norm, the one he went fishing with to supplement the family budget, had been killed in a mine accident.

After a season as captain coach of Wagga’s Turvey Park club, he was recalled to the Raiders to provide experience and later coached their Presidents Cup team to a premiership in 1995. It was a Dutch-born groundsman at Canberra’s Seiffert Oval, Hank Inderwisch, who proved to be most prescient.

Eye of the Storm … Craig Bellamy at Melbourne trainig last week.Credit: Paul Rovere

The long-term curator who had moved the hoses, mowed the grass and turned off the lights, while watching teams train, told a board meeting, “The best coach I’ve seen at Seiffert is Craig Bellamy.” Insofar as the Raiders joined the NSWRL in 1982, one of those coaches he observed was Wayne Bennett (1987) who, as later boss of the Broncos, invited Bellamy to be his assistant in 1998.

If Bellamy had not already learned that the sorcerer’s stone of coaching is working harder than the players, he had his finishing education in Brisbane. He had proved that while he had no peer as a technical coach, he was also a players’ coach. He learnt the dangers of leaving a training session early in order to lunch with a rich sponsor, or changing the weekly schedule to accept a high-paying speaker’s gig.

He also saw the folly of playing politics with board members, as well as the duplicity of seeding stories in the media. Players have an advanced radar for deception and, while some coaches can succeed with the dark arts for a while, they can’t stay at the same club for two decades and be an enduring success.

His long-term strike rate with the Storm is such that, should they win the 2024 premiership, he would have six grand final victories since 2003 (including the 2007 and 2009 ones subsequently cancelled owing to salary cap breaches). Compare that with the two inaugural coaches recently inducted into the ARL Hall of Fame: Jack Gibson, who coached for the same period for five premierships at six clubs (the Roosters twice) and Bennett, who has also coached at six clubs (the Broncos twice) for seven premierships in double the time.

Craig Bellamy takes the ball up during his playing career with Canberra.Credit: Fairfax Media

It is extremely challenging to remain relevant at the same club for two decades. Former player Will Chambers sat in the Storm theatrette in the week leading up to the semi-final against Cronulla and heard Bellamy tell the players, “If you aren’t prepared to work hard, I’ll find someone who will.” Chambers turned to another former champion, Billy Slater, and said, “I heard that in 2012.” But he also conceded he left the meeting with a surge of adrenalin. “It was an old black and white message, but it still gave me goosebumps,” Chambers said.

Nicknamed “Bellyache” from his Canberra days, Bellamy is a glass nearly empty person. Asked after the win over the Sharks whether had he watched the Panthers-Roosters match the previous evening, he admitted catching glimpses. Instead, he was studying his potential opponents in the event the Storm had lost to the Sharks. “I’ve been caught out too many times,” he said in reference to losses in the first finals weekend.

Earlier in that week, he faced the challenge of culling vision to show the players. While aware it is better to show too little than too much, he feared the possibility of the Sharks pulling off a move he didn’t show. As it transpired, the Sharks scored a try with two seconds left in the first half from an inside pass play he did highlight.

It’s the type of disappointment guaranteed to detonate the most placid coach, but Bellamy had composed himself before he entered the dressing room.

Nor did he expose his team to his seething disappointment with the draw the NRL conjured for the Storm in 2024: one game at home over the final five rounds, including away matches against last year’s grand finalists and a trip to Townsville following a five-day turnaround.

Nicknamed “Bellyache” from his Canberra days, Bellamy is a glass nearly empty person.

After all, back in 2010 when Melbourne had the two premierships stripped (for salary cap breaches), he vowed not to use “prove the bastards wrong” motivation, knowing it is ultimately defeatist.

He will be 65 next week, an age when most of his contemporaries retire. Yet he remains relevant to the increasing sensitivities of today’s generation of players who now call him “Bellsa”. Whereas players of the 1970s and 80s, such as Les Boyd and Rod Reddy, relished tips on the mental and physical weaknesses of opponents, Bellamy recognises his players are still mates with the ones who left to join other NRL clubs.

United … Surrounded by all 22 players, Melbourne Storm coach Craig Bellamy reads a statement to the media in 2010 during the salary cap scandal.Credit: Paul Rovere

While most of his advice to players is respectful, he can provide harsh scrutiny. Players accept it because, quite simply, he makes them better. He takes rejects from other clubs and moulds them into champions. Just under half the Storm’s starting team are discards from other NRL clubs and only one (Xavier Coates) was offered big money by his incumbent club to stay.

If loyalty is Bellamy’s greatest strength, it is also his occasional weakness. It’s hard to drop players who bleed for you, despite their declining form. Powerful runs by the above-mentioned Chambers propelled the Storm to their 2012 premiership, but he was outplayed in the 2018 grand final and the 2019 preliminary final by the Roosters, the Storm’s opponents on Friday.

Yet, after hearing Bellamy talk to today’s team, Chambers left the theatrette with an overwhelming feeling of what could be called redemptive loyalty. Driving home, Chambers said to his wife, Bianca, “I would give almost anything to play one more game for him.”

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