Storm coach Craig Bellamy was lost for words trying to describe how his side scored the first three tries then conceded the next seven to be thumped by the Dolphins on Friday night.
The Storm had won 79 of their past 80 games when leading by 14 points but this wasn’t just a loss, it was a shellacking by a team that was sitting 14th on the ladder.
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It was a capitulation that a stunned Bellamy said he’d never seen before in his 23 seasons at the club.
“Yeah, f***, really disappointed. I can’t remember coaching a Storm side that’s been up 16-2 then had 40 in a row put on us. That’s embarrassing,” Bellamy said.
“But hopefully we’ll learn from it. It will be a tough review day. I’m not sure what else to say, it was really disappointing.
“Jahrome (Hughes) just made a good point in the dressing room that we’ve been winning our games off our attack, to be quite honest and today we had to stump up defensively because we kept turning the ball over and we just couldn’t do it.
“It’s a big concern to rely just on your attack. We’ve been a little bit aware of it, that our defence hasn’t been as good as we’d like it to be.
“It’s probably more individuals, to be honest, but I just have to have a look through it where we think the problems are and there are a few problems.
“After the game I thought perhaps it was complacency after getting that sort of start and just putting the slippers on.
“We’ll do our review and we need players coming in with reasons why tonight might have happened.”
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Storm No. 6 Cameron Munster agreed their defence had to improve if they wanted to live up to their billing as the premiership favourites this year.
“The last couple of weeks we’ve won on our attack, we haven’t had to defend our line a whole heap,” Munster said.
“We’ve relied on the class of our attack and it’s worked and got us out of trouble, so the learning from us is our defence.
“It’s disappointing but I’m glad it’s happened now and not in the back end of the year. It’s a good wake up call.
“We know we have points in us, so if we can defend really well we’re going to be a very hard team to beat this year.”
Bellamy said Jack Howarth could be out for the season after dislocating his shoulder and admitted they were running thin in the outside backs.
“He’ll be out for an extended time but if he has an operation it’ll be the season I think,” he said.
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“He’ll try and rehab it and see how it goes from there, I don’t think it was out for too long so that’s a plus. We’ll see what the medical team thinks, but it’s a bad injury.
“Will (Warbrick) is a head thing so it’s hard to know with that and I think (Nick) Meaney is still another couple of weeks away.
Moses Leo last week, he had a shoulder operation during the week and he’s going to be out for three months.
“It’s been a tough time, injury wise, that’s no excuse for tonight but we are running short in the outside backs.”
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