For nearly 20 years, the Melbourne Storm have stood as the most dominant and feared franchise in the National Rugby League. But the 2026 season has brought the club an unprecedented crisis: a four-match losing skid that has exposed long-unseen vulnerabilities and left the squad hungry to reverse their fortunes ahead of Friday’s critical clash with the Canberra Raiders.\n\nThe team’s most recent defeat delivered an extra dose of humiliation, as the New Zealand Warriors – who had not beaten Melbourne in 17 consecutive matchups – bullied the Storm on their own home turf to snap that crippling losing streak. The core issues plaguing Craig Bellamy’s side this season trace back to a brutal off-season: a crippling wave of injuries and the departure of multiple star players left the roster depleted, forcing the veteran coach to shift middle forwards to edge positions and leaving the team without the dynamic wide attacking threat it has relied on for years.\n\nIt is on the defensive end, however, that the Storm’s struggles have been most glaring. Through the opening six rounds of the season, the side has conceded a staggering 158 total points, with 116 of those coming in just their past three outings. After the Warriors defeat, high-profile rugby league figures have been quick to criticize the squad: club great Billy Slater publicly questioned the team’s overall attitude, while former NSW coach Brad Fittler labeled Melbourne’s defensive performance “terrible” during his appearance on the *Sunday Footy Show*. The poor first-half performance against the Warriors also sparked an infamous, blistering halftime spray from coach Bellamy, a moment that gained widespread attention across rugby league social media channels.\n\nSpeaking ahead of Friday’s matchup with the Raiders, Storm captain and hooker Harry Grant has acknowledged the team’s subpar performance, admitting that the club has not hit the on-field standard it has built its reputation on. “There’s a level that we need to be performing to, and we’re certainly not there at the moment with application on the field,” Grant said. “We’ve been preparing really well for games and there are answers in the team and in the coaching squad, but it’s up to us to put in practice for performances on the weekend.”\n\nGrant added that all outside criticism of the struggling side is fair, but he is focused on tuning out external noise rather than letting it derail the team’s comeback efforts. He pointed to the rapid shift in public narrative around the Canterbury-Bankstown Bulldogs, who were widely written off just a few weeks ago before stunning the league with an upset win over the top-ranked Penrith Panthers. “Everyone changes their tune week after week,” Grant noted. “With that, it’s eliminating all the outside noise. We’ve got all the answers in the club here with the playing group and the coaching staff, but it’s just about applying it. People can have their opinions, but it doesn’t mean too much.”\n\nAll eyes will be on young forward Joe Chan this week, who was benched early in the second half against the Warriors after committing three errors and one penalty, just hours after receiving a public rebuke from Bellamy at halftime. Grant pushed back on narratives that have singled Chan out for blame, emphasizing that the Storm’s slump is a collective issue across the entire squad. “Everyone’s been in those shoes at times as a player,” Grant said. “We just need Joey at his best. When he brings his strengths to the team and is at his best, he’s a great asset to the team. You can single one player out, but it’s not just one player. It’s a collective 30-man squad, and that’s what it is.”\n\nHistorically, the Storm have built strong early-season leads to give themselves breathing room during the State of Origin representative period, but this year the club sits with just two wins from six matches, leaving no room for further error. Still, Grant and the squad have not given up on their 2026 campaign, pointing to the Penrith Panthers’ incredible 2025 turnaround as inspiration: that side sat at the bottom of the ladder after 12 rounds last year before rallying to reach the preliminary final, one win short of a grand final berth.\n\n“You can certainly take inspiration from other teams and where they’ve been,” Grant said. “At the end of the day, it’s a different team, a different environment, and it’s us that’s in it and it’s us that can make it happen. It’s not just going to happen because it’s happened in the past. You’ve got to go out there and create it and make it happen yourself.”\n\nThe Storm now enter Friday’s clash with Canberra desperate to snap their losing streak and avoid a second consecutive heavy defeat that would deepen their early-season crisis.
‘It’s not just one player’: Harry Grant defends Joe Chan after epic Craig Bellamy bake as Storm look to snap out of horror form slump
