The rumour that's been whispered throughout the NRL is that long-serving Melbourne Storm head coach Craig Bellamy may be set to leave the club.
While the Gold Coast Titans have now confirmed talks have ended with Bellamy, it's clear the master coach wants to, at some point, relocate to Queensland.
His current deal with Melbourne ends at the end of 2026.
The pursuit from the Titans made sense. The Melbourne Storm coach has seen constant success at the club, taking the team to eleven grand finals in 23 seasons. A struggling Gold Coast side, still without a premiership after almost two decades, need a coach like Bellamy.
However, despite talk that the Storm will fare just as well with or without Bellamy at the reigns, the cold hard truth remains that if the Storm wants consistency, they have got to stand their ground on the master coach.
You see, most of a team's success is built on the factor of consistency, especially in terms of coaching.
Players go through changes; switches to different clubs, injuries and even retirement, thus influencing the club as a whole.
However, coaches who remain constant serve as stable ground, despite experiencing the player changes. This familiarity helps clubs, nurtures them, inspires them.
Craig Bellamy is a very good example of this unchanged variable.
Three of Melbourne's biggest stars, Cooper Cronk, Billy Slater, and, of course, arguably the best league player in recent history, Cameron Smith, played huge roles in Bellamy's time in helping the team get deep into finals and win premierships off the back.
When those three either left or retired, people expected a dip in the Storm's success.
That dip, if it happened at all, quickly repaired itself within the squad and throughout the 2000s, the Melbourne Storm have been altogether, extremely successful. Not even the infamous salary cap scandal between 2007-2010 diverted them significantly.
When you look at all the changes the Storm went through during their prime years, one of the only unchanged factors is Craig Bellamy himself.
The coach, despite being nicknamed “Bellyache”, has really grown on the Storm; players, staff and fans alike. He has become an icon like no other in the Melbourne side, and I don't think there is any other coach out there that truly lives and breathes this club as much as Bellamy does.
Unfortunately, the media these days are telling a different story about Bellamy's future. Let's now visualise a setting at the Melbourne Storm if Craig Bellamy really decides to head for the exit. An obvious place to start would be “Who would be the Storm's new coach?”
The media have communicated options in the form of Queensland coach and Melbourne Storm great, Billy Slater.
With his contract at the Maroons coming to an end, Slater will be a free agent in time for him to take over from Bellamy.
Sounds perfect, doesn't it? It's almost like it's too good to be true…
Billy Slater, despite playing the majority of his footy at the Storm, has expressed that he is unlikely to become head coach due to personal commitments.
Billy's former teammate and current media figure Cameron Smith has said “He [Billy Slater]'s got too good of a set-up with his commentary with Nine. He's got his business with his horse breeding and is coaching State of Origin as well.”
Slater himself also stated that coaching the Storm was “not on his [Billy's] radar.”
In the event that Craig Bellamy leaves and Billy Slater chooses not to coach the Storm, Melbourne could see a coaching crisis coming.
A team that has heavily relied on coaching consistency in the past two decades have literally no other coaching options that will satisfy this need.
Look at two relatively weaker teams in the past few seasons in the Parramatta Eels and South Sydney Rabbitohs.
One thing those two have in common is a lack of coaching consistency. The Eels themselves have gone through three different coaches across two seasons, while the Rabbitohs have had their fair share of coach sackings.
Of course, while a lot of factors may have been at play, which resulted in their respective poor seasons, coaching instability always plays a significant role. Even Melbourne, a major team in terms of success, may fall prey to these circumstances.
This is why the Melbourne Storm must do everything they can to keep Craig Bellamy at the club.
Outside in the coaching market chaos ahead of the 2026 season, the only satisfactory, if unlikely option for them is Billy Slater.
The Storm, by their trends and standards, are currently in the middle of a minor drought, not having won a comp since 2020.
While they have been relatively close on numerous occasions since, should they lose Bellamy, a man with so much skill and experience on the big stage, they could see a bitter drop ahead of them in seasons to come.
Should Melbourne wish to obtain a long-awaited premiership in the near future, their only realistic chance of this is with Craig Bellamy.
Competition for this master-class coach will only get tighter, so while the Titans threat has ceased, Melbourne should be aiming to retain the veteran for as long as possible.
Cynthia, that is a perceptive observation that coaching consistency is so important.
Question for you. Who do the Storm have as Assistant Coaches, and who is coaching the Sunshine Coast Falcons and the Brisbane Tigers ? Melbourne will – I expect – want their feeder clubs to develop their players to play in a fashion that mimics the Storm. Maybe there is someone there who could be suitable to take over.
I’m not enthusiastic about Billy Slater as the Storm coach. Certainly, he has a decent record with Queensland SOO team, but coaching a rep side, and coaching an NRL side are worlds apart.
For the rep side, the coach picks whoever is fit and in form, and tries to get them working as a team rather than a bunch of talented individuals who first met in the car-park the day before the game.
For the NRL side, the coach has to think about recruitment and retention, about player development, and about keeping under the cap. He has to worry about off-field incidents. He has to worry about rivalry in the squad. His focus has to be long-term, not three games in the middle of the season.
That’s a world of difference, and Billy has no experience in that.
@ Im notwrong
Thanks for your comment mate. Appreciate the questions; I’ll do my best to answer them.
What you said about the feeder clubs and assistant coaches would work – however, they are assistant coaches for a reason. Different coaches have different coaching styles and methods and Bellamy has just never really appeared to me as somebody who delegates a lot. He likes to do things his way and his assistant coaches are more or less kind of just “there”, if you know what I mean? Therefore they could have picked up some things under Bellamy but I think that’s far from being enough to fill in for him long-term.
Another thing, the whole issue is consistency. The Storm will have to adapt to a new coach no matter what. There are too many variables with that. We don’t know how it’s gonna fare. The coaches may come and go and the Storm’s coaching situation for the next 3-5 years at least may start resembling that of the Rabbitohs or Eels – though that’s not to say the team itself will fare the same way as they do have a much stronger side on paper but their premiership dreams may be pushed back a few years.
Yeah no, I agree with what you said about Billy Slater. I reckon it’s also part of why he has tried to turn this job down – except he may not have wanted to go into all the reasons that you just mentioned. I do think though, that if he doesn’t do it and the Storm have absolutely nobody else, there would be a lot of pressure put on him to take on the job, especially with the media talking about it all the time. As a Queenslander, I would prefer Billy to just keep coaching Origin (maybe get an extension?) but yeah, I think Billy will more or less be a last resort for the Storm and I think if he does go there (against his will), it’d be a lose-lose situation for everybody, at least in the first few years anyway.