The 48,000 minutes of explosions that make Bellamy the greatest
Stuart was on stage at an intimate dinner held in the Fiji Airways Lounge at AAMI Park on Wednesday to celebrate Bellamy coaching 600 NRL matches – a milestone he will reach at the same venue against the Roosters on Friday night.
In his unique way, Stuart gave us the sharpest insight into his former Raiders teammate, coaching rival, and great mate – by taking the mickey out of Bellamy’s signature coach’s box explosion whenever something goes awry on the field. The contorted face. The detonation. The walk to the back of the box. It’s a standard sight at most Storm matches.
“If you look at all his games,” Stuart said, “that’s 599 matches times 80 minutes, a few golden points. He’s close to 48,000 minutes of being an absolute f..king idiot in the coach’s box. I don’t get how Cameron Munster can double-shot a pass and hit someone in the ankles. The winger didn’t know it was coming because Munster didn’t. And then he drops it, Craig goes off his head, goes to the back of the box. It’s 38-4 with three minutes to go. Was it that bad?”
Stuart’s gibe says everything you need to know about Bellamy; his obsessiveness, his attention to detail, and just straight-out perfectionism that has made him, arguably, the best coach in history. He mightn’t have the same number of trophies as Wayne Bennett, but he’s been just as influential, if not more.
“The thing that really irks me – something you’d say pisses me off – is I don’t get angry if someone gets to where they need to get to on the field,” Bellamy explained in an absorbing interview with Melbourne media giant Gerard Whateley.
“So, if someone makes a break and then someone backs them up and they get there and drop the pass, I don’t get angry because the effort to get there is there. But when I get angry is when someone makes a bust and a bloke is back there walking and doesn’t get to where he should. It’s not so much that you made a mistake with the action. It’s when you don’t get to live up to the action. That irks me.”
Bellamy’s work ethic is the stuff of legend, and he’s infused the Storm organisation with it since arriving from Brisbane in 2003.
He’s often the first to arrive at the club, hitting the boxing pads or on the rower, before getting down to the business of setting the standard for the rest of the competition. “He trains until he sees the pearly gates,” former Storm winger Josh Addo-Carr used to say of Bellamy’s training regime.
The coach demands as much from the players as himself.
Storm fullback Billy Slater arrived at the club from Innisfail in Queensland on the same day as Bellamy in the pre-season of 2003. They ran two laps of the 3.8km Tan Track around Melbourne’s Botanical Gardens with a five-minute break in between.
“The second time I did it, I won the race,” Slater told the room. “I took 10 seconds off my time. When I got a tap to see the coach, I was feeling good about myself. He said, ‘If you run your second lap faster than your first lap again, you’ll be heading for Tullamarine Airport real quick.’ I got an insight into what Craig valued and that was your best effort. He didn’t like not giving your best. He turned up first, left last, worked harder than everyone else.”
That unrelenting standard scares off prospective players. “Working that hard has been a deterrent for some players to go to Melbourne,” said backrower Dale Finucane, the former Storm lock who worked harder than everyone else and was exactly Bellamy’s type of player. Bellamy gravitates to unfashionables like Ryan Hinchcliffe, Dallas Johnson and current prop Josh King, probably because they remind them of himself.
“I don’t get it,” Slater said with a laugh. “How many tries have they scored for you? I actually do get it. Anyone who knows Craig knows he’s a working-class person. Comes from a working-class family and area. Sometimes those players get lost in the shiny things in the game. Not in the successful teams: they have players like Dale Finucane who works for the team without accolade. That’s what Craig celebrates: effort.”
Whether Slater wants to eventually replace Bellamy is a question that looms large over the Melbourne Storm. He spoke on Wednesday night about the “courage” of Bellamy’s coaching: the courage to give players an opportunity.
Bellamy showed courage in making a former trackwork jockey his starting fullback. Slater finished his career as one the game’s greatest and he’s showing similar brilliance as a coach. His ballsy selection calls as Queensland coach flipped the script on State of Origin after losing game one.
“I’ve caught myself a couple of times in the coach’s box, thinking, ‘what are you doing you idiot! You’re starting to act like him!’” Slater joked. “I had to check myself with that … I’m different to him. Sometimes, I’m too smart for my own good. I complicate things. I’ve reflected on Craig’s methods. I’ve lent on that. The work ethic is what he instilled in me. He didn’t teach me a whole heap with skills and talent. But he helped lay out that talent more often because of that work ethic.”
By his own admission, becoming a grandfather has mellowed Bellamy, although he thinks there’s less value for a “hard-arsed” coach in the modern era.
“This new generation, they don’t like hard-arse comments,” he said. “When my granddaughter was born I just mellowed and that probably came at a good time for me. When I first came in, it was, ‘my way or the highway. If you didn’t want to work hard, well piss off.’ That was a little too gung-ho. I probably would have burnt them out if I kept going like that. These days you have to be a bit more aware of people’s feelings.”
Over the years, he’s coached all different shapes and sizes. Different characters, personalities.
“One of the rat bags has been in the press a bit lately,” Bellamy said in reference to former Storm hooker Brandon Smith, who was this week charged by Queensland Police with drug supply and betting charges for allegedly providing team changes to an alleged drug dealer. “It’s a real shame about Brandon. He’s got some great qualities … And he’s a really talented player. He just can’t seem to stay on the straight and narrow. Hopefully he might learn from this.”
Bellamy and Stuart are on track to meet each other in the grand final. If they do, they will honour their longstanding commitment to have a beer with each other each time they play each other.
“I hate it,” Stuart said. “I don’t like coaching against him because I know what it’s like. I like making it personal, but I don’t like making it personal with you.”
When Stuart was coaching Cronulla, the pair had a spectacular fallout when Stuart made public comments about Cameron Smith’s wrestling techniques.
“I got that desperately wrong,” Stuart said. “He called me and said, ‘You cut up some clips and send them to me’. I said, ‘No, I haven’t got the time’. We didn’t talk for 12 months.”
Stuart then became emotional. “The impact he’s had on me as a bloke … When I left Canberra in 1999 to join Canterbury, he said, ‘I can’t tell you what I think face-to-face. So I’ll write you a letter.’ That’s the mark of the man. He couldn’t tell me as a bloke. He wrote it down. Still got the letter … I was going to rip up the 12 months we had off!”
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