The 2024 NRL regular season is still a few weeks away but there’s plenty to discuss over a schooner or two between now and then.
Instead of recycling the usual clichéd pre-season rhetoric, I’m picking out some genuine NRL talking points until Round 1 kicks off in Las Vegas.
From team list changes, positional battles and shapes on my wish-list, let’s dive into some 2024 NRL Pre-Season Pub Talk.
An un-Melbourne-like Storm
Melbourne have long boasted one of the better-managed rosters in the NRL but are in uncharted waters following a shaky 2023 campaign.
Shaky is a relative term; a third-placed finish and a preliminary final loss to the eventual premiers is a result most clubs would be happy with… not the Storm, though.
Craig Bellamy’s final comments of the 2023 season spoke to the un-Melbourne-like issues troubling his squad last year:
“It took us a little while to work out what our best footy was (this season) and what worked for us. We had some change in personnel in the off season so that took us a little while but it just kept creeping in every now and then.”
Craig Bellamy, FoxSports
Back-to-back injuries to Ryan Papenhuyzen threatened to derail the famous Melbourne fullback factory line, but instead the encouraging form of Nick Meaney – and the emergence of Sua Fa’alogo – has left Bellamy with healthy competition in the fullback position heading into the 2024 NRL season.
It’s holes elsewhere in this Storm squad, however, that feel so un-Melbourne-like.
Between centre and backrow, Melbourne have ten player options to fill four positions heading into this year. That’s a good ratio on paper, but the numbers are misleading.
Two positions are all but locked up; Reimis Smith only needs some injury luck to be reinstated as one of the better defensive centres in the NRL while Eli Katoa struck up a very likable combination with Jahrome Hughes by the end of his first year in purple.
Melbourne’s left edge is far less settled.
After 49 NRL games across three seasons, Trent Loiero is yet to secure the No.11 jumper amidst talk of a move into the middle in 2024. He averaged a career-high 100 running metres in 2023 but was repeatedly made a target by opposing teams in defence.
This was Penrith’s first try in their preliminary final win over Melbourne last year; note who they get at in the leadup:
While we must credit Penrith for their textbook attack, there’s a reason they circled Loiero as the target. He’s a willing defender but the impact of that passive legs tackle is clear; Moses Leota generates some ruck speed, Melbourne can’t cover Loiero down the short side and Brian To’o cashes in for the first of two very similar tries.
Since then, Shawn Blore – a relative rookie from a struggling Wests Tigers outfit – has arrived in Melbourne and is already in the frame for the No.11 jumper.
Bellamy has worked wonders with fringe first-graders in the past, but how often do we talk about a rookie starting in a Storm jumper? It’s a new feel for Melbourne, who otherwise has the unproven Joe Chan and Jack Howarth (one NRL game each) in their back row reserves.
Again, it all feels very un-Melbourne-like.
Edge backrowers are some of the most important defensive players on the field. Felise Kaufusi has carved out an 189-NRL game career – most of them in Melbourne – by making the right reads in defence from four-man. His departure (alongside the Bromwich brothers) left a gaping hole in Melbourne’s forward pack and barring Josh King, the Storm are yet to find their replacements.
Blore has all the traits of a strike attacking backrower, but can he provide the defensive quality Bellamy clearly values in his edge forwards?
You could argue he profiles similarly to Katoa in this regard, leaving the Storm with attacking strike and defensive questions on both edges.
One channel wider on that left edge and there is a peloton of potential centres jostling for Justin Olam’s vacated No.4 jumper.
Meaney will be backed to do a job but Melbourne are just one serious injury away from relying on the likes of Marion Seve, Young Tonumaipea, Dean Ieremia or Grant Anderson to perform long-term in first-grade; not quite the depth we’ve come to expect from the Storm.
Bellamy knows the importance of combinations and cohesion but his hand has been forced in recent years. With a little more stability this time around (and given what he achieved with a similar squad last year), we can expect the Storm to improve on last year’s form – even if they don’t improve on their third placed finish.
It’s how or where they improve that I’m interested in.
Melbourne are comfortably removed from the Big Three Era but are yet to establish the next; is NRL 2024 the year it begins?