‘Google is very new to him’: the other side to Craig Bellamy
Craig Bellamy built one of the best coaching careers in Australian sport and on Sunday will lead his team in his 10th NRL grand final as coach and 22nd year in charge of the club. But while his sprays are legendary, his daughter says he is all heart.
Rachel Bellamy was born with a hole in her heart, and as a little girl she was in and out of hospital for the first five years of her life.
An overwhelming childhood memory of that time was when she was feeling quite ill, she’d creep out into the living room and find a spot on the couch to sit with her dad Craig, who would often be re-watching a game for the Raiders he’d just played.
Rachel remembers him fastidiously pressing stop and rewind on the video player, over and over again, as he reviewed his performance, trying to find flaws and strengths, an edge.
“He was happy to be there, late, late into the night, rewinding over and over … that is dad’s pure dedication,” Rachel says.
And today, Rachel watches her dad, now the iconic Melbourne Storm coach, one of the greatest the game has seen, sitting at the kitchen table at home in Melbourne doing the same. Again obsessively watching little video clips, this time of his Melbourne Storm players on his laptop at any moment he can get – even on holidays.
“As dad has often said to me: ‘you’ve got to do something you love, otherwise, what’s the point?” Rachel says.
Rachel says she’s spent her whole life watching her dad “rise just before the sun”, to hit the gym first, then to start work, to do what he loves. She still watches him carry books around, usually on mindset, sport, coaching, chasing “inspiration” for “the boys”.
And with all that he’s built one of the best coaching careers in Australian sport and on Sunday will lead his team in his 10th NRL grand final as coach and 22nd year in charge of the club. His winning record is an extraordinary 70 per cent.
“It’s just magical what he has achieved,” Rachel says. “I watched him get coach of the year the other night, mum [Wendy] and I are just so proud of him. He is really humble about it all, he gets so embarrassed by the attention around his achievements.”
“He often says to me; ‘I’m just turning up doing something I love and I get to work with all these incredible people…’”
While Bellamy has been masterful at creating an incredible culture at the Storm, and it’s been well-documented, there is the other side of that’s not often seen or heard about. Like Bellamy still doesn’t use email, “Google is very new to him” and only started using an ATM card a few years ago.
“A couple of years ago, mum had to put her foot down and was just like; ‘If you can coach a team to a grand final, you can go get money out of an ATM’,” Rachel says.
And while Bellamy is a self-described “cranky bastard”, and his explosive behaviour in the coaching box is legendary, he’s nothing but mellow at home.
His daughter Rachel, now 37 and a mother of one, says when she watches her dad sometimes hysterically frustrated, she can’t quite believe what she is seeing.
“He’s just got a big heart and when I see him in the coach’s box I feel like I’m watching someone else,” she says, laughing. “I’ve never seen that in my life at home.”
“They’re two separate people to me. He’s a nurturing, caring, parent who is also a mate … What people see during a football game is just, there’s such a small part of who he is as a person, people in my life who meet him for the first time, they often say; ‘Oh, my God, he’s so different to what I thought’.
“I’m like; ‘what did you think I had? Just some crazy dad at home?’”
Those sprays
It’s at the football club where things can get crazily intense, Bellamy’s sprays are legendary. There’s a tale about a particularly fiery video review six years ago involving Storm centre Will Chambers that sums up both the tough and soft side of the coach.
The story goes Bellamy had just ripped to shreds the then senior Storm player on-field leadership in a team video review. Bellamy screamed he had expected more from Chambers at that moment.
As Bellamy’s spittle flew through the air, Chambers could feel the rage rising and he had to use all his self-discipline to not to outwardly combust in that meeting. He sat silently instead.
A few hours later Chambers was walking past Bellamy’s office when the coach called him in. “I meant to ask you Will; how’s your family?” Bellamy asked, gently.
Chambers exploded: “Why would you care, you just put me on f--king show in there?”
Bellamy barked back: “Hey Will, you f--king listen to me when we’re in that room in there; I’m your coach. When we’re here, I’m your dad.”
It’s former NRL star and commentator Matthew Johns who retells this story and he says this story sums up Bellamy’s way.
“He is both a scientific-like coach and a brilliant man manager – and he’s married them both beautifully,” said Johns, who has worked as a Storm halves coach.
Queensland Rugby League boss Ben Ikin, who in his debut season at the Broncos in 1999 had Bellamy as an assistant coach, says it’s the way he delivers his message that makes him so powerful.
“He has a great intensity about him, but at the same time has this deep empathy for people,” Ikin says. “He can be shouting at you and still make you feel like he cares … you will not find a player that’s been coached by Craig Bellamy that doesn’t love him.”
Bellamy, who turned 65 this week, grew up knowing only how to work hard.
He was raised in Portland, in central western New South Wales, a blue collar town where his dad worked in the local cement factory. Bellamy himself became an apprentice electrician. He played footy on bush ovals and for the Oberon Tigers. He played for the Macquarie Scorpions and one day played in Cessnock – that’s when he first crossed paths with Johns.
“It was in 1981, my father was the coach of the Cessnock Goannas and I was just a kid watching on but I clearly remember him as being tenacious, he was just all energy,” Johns says.
They would cross paths again, this time on the footy field – by then Bellamy was at the Canberra Raiders but on his way out in reserve grade, just as Johns, playing for Newcastle, was on his way up.
“He was certainly still tenacious, he actually hit me over the top of the ear with a bunny chop that had my ear just ringing,” Johns said.
But while Bellamy’s rugby league playing career was by no means glorious, it was what shaped him as a coach. “For him to get to where he did, to play first grade, and he says this himself, he had to be the fittest, the most disciplined player because he didn’t have the talent,” Johns said.
“Now he expects the same from his players, and then the talent is just the cherry on top. The Melbourne Storm players are always so disciplined, they work so hard, and they’re just an extension of him.”
Johns’ son Cooper, who played 11 games for Melbourne, says the intensity and culture at the Storm is incredible, and tough. Cooper remembers being fresh out of school, just 18 and on his first Storm pre-season camp down in Geelong Grammar school. It was a two-week camp with a relentless schedule of training and long meetings, where the team was shaping who they wanted to be that season.
After a brutal morning training session, a teenage Cooper decided to jam in an early afternoon nap. He slept through his alarm. He woke in a panic and soon found himself late outside a meeting room. He wasn’t alone, big forward Sam Kasiano was also loitering outside the door.
Kasiano and Cooper decided to enter the room late. Bellamy didn’t lose his mind over that – the punishment would come later.
That evening, after another arduous training session, Bellamy addressed the group. “Right, everybody’s getting up at 4am, we’re doing a wrestling session because Cooper was late,” Bellamy said.
Cooper was silently aghast. “He didn’t even bring up the fact that Sam Kasiano was late as well,” he said. “In the wrestling session the boys were just targeting me, all the big forwards and all the big boys including Jesse Bromwich.”
Afterwards, Cooper thought his career was done. “I was completely rattled,” he said. “I thought I would never play first grade for the club. I thought everyone’s off me, even though no one was … but the best thing was, I was never late again for a meeting …”
He adds: “I suppose the best way to put it is, being at the Storm, it’s like being in a really well-disciplined, tough-love family.”
Speaking tour
Six years ago Ben Ikin and Bellamy went on a speaking tour around country NSW. Ikin went in with an intent to finely unpack how Bellamy approached his coaching in the question and answer sessions.
“We didn’t do much work beforehand in preparing for the tour and I just sort of let it unfold on stage,” Ikin said.
In their first appearance, he got to the part where Bellamy made the transition from being a Broncos assistant coach to senior coach at the Storm. Ikin wanted to nail down how Bellamy became so great.
“I am on stage, I’m trying to sound like I’m the smartest person in the room, I’m just dropping buzzwords left, right, and centre,” Ikin said.
“I say: ‘So you move to Melbourne and you go on this journey’ – Craig would never use the word ‘journey’. ‘So you want to set up this operation’ – Craig would never use the word ‘operation’. ‘So what are the key pillars? And what was your strategy like?’”
It’s at this moment that Ikin sees Bellamy look at him quizzically.
“I’m asking the question, I could see him looking at me thinking; ‘what the f--k?” Ikin said. “I got to the end of the question, and Craig said; ‘Ben, I don’t really know what you just asked me’ …”
“But when I got to Melbourne, all I knew is that I was going to wake up every day and try to be the best I could every day,” Bellamy said. “So I turned up to work and knew that would then allow me to expect the same thing from my players.’”
Bellamy drives himself hard. In his first pre-season with the Storm, it was Bellamy who was cutting up four kilometres of The Tan circuit with the players – and beating them all. Today he is at the gym every day by 6am lifting weights, boxing or running.
One of his great mates, Gary “Macca” McDonell, has been witness to how hard he works. The pair played at the Raiders together and he marvels at Bellamy’s commitment.
“He’s always working on himself or footy,” he said. “He just doesn’t take it for granted, not for one minute. He has a saying; ‘keep the main thing, the main thing’.”
“He’s got such a simple way of being Craig. And I think that’s probably the key, right? It’s just a mixture of good, old fashioned hard work, and he hasn’t over complicated it, right? But then he has evolved continually, you know?”
‘The tranquilliser’
When his first granddaughter Billie came along nine years ago, after a loss the senior Storm players would quietly will her to be brought into the rooms. Billie became known as the “tranquilliser” and later “the pacifier” for the way she’d tone down her grandfather’s intensity.
While Bellamy may have chilled out slightly the hunger is still there, he reportedly turned down a $10-million offer to coach at Parramatta, and last May he declared he will stay with the Storm for the 2025 season. He finds joy in the fact he gets to work alongside his son Aaron, who helps shape the Storm’s attack alongside the likes of club great Billy Slater.
“It’s magical having two family members working at this club,” Rachel says.
But, when will this ‘journey’ end?
“I’m not quite sure how long the fire’s going to burn, but at the end of the day, I don’t think I’ll see 70 out in footy,” Bellamy said this week.
Retirement has been a big discussion in the Bellamy family over the last few years. Rachel often says to him in return; “But what else would you do dad? Like, what are your other interests?’”
“Football; it’s his life, he just loves it, the club, the people, the culture they’ve created … it’s all coming from a good place,” Rachel says. “He just wants everyone to be the best that they can be … and let’s be honest, he would not be this successful if he didn’t care.”
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