MELBOURNE Storm mentor Craig Bellamy is widely regarded as one of Australia's best coaches, a stern disciplinarian and a crafty innovator whose teams are always well drilled in the fundamentals and who regularly achieve success.
This week he received the Dally M Coach of the Year award after leading the Storm to the minor premiership only a year after his club was forced to play for no premiership points and with a new-look team that lost seven representative players.
And Bellamy credits much of the success of the Storm to his relationship with AFL clubs, coaches and players.
In Saturday's The Australian, Bellamy says he has made the most of living in the home of Australian football.
"AFL here is absolutely enormous, so as a club we're not trying to compete with that," Bellamy said.
"We realise we're in a foreign land and we accept that. I wasn't interested in AFL when I first came here and I don't think many of our guys were. But because of the media saturation, everybody has a team and everybody talks football, you can't help but get caught up in a bit. So that's how we embrace it.
"And not only is it so big, it's just so well run. Don't forget we sit right in the middle of it.
"We never look at it like we're trying to be up there as a game alongside AFL, because we're not and never will be."
Coaches who Bellamy has a close relationship with include Collingwood's Mick Malthouse and Hawthorn's Alastair Clarkson, two of the most innovative bosses in the game.
His relationship is so close with the latter that he has sat in Clarkson's coach's box, while Clarkson travelled to the Gold Coast to watch the lead-up to the Storm's clash with the Titans.
Clarkson didn't, however, sit in the box with the famously intense Bellamy, whose tirades have become infamous and make Clarkson's half-time spray against the Suns look like a bedtime story.
Marking and kicking are two skills the Storm have honed from Australian football.
Storm captain and Queensland and Australian captain-in-waiting Cameron Smith says the club's swapping of skills with AFL clubs has helped change the nature of rugby league.
"I think it is best to work with each other and that's what we have done ever since I have been at the club," Smith said.
"If anything, it has helped change the way we play the game a little bit, particularly with our outside backs with the way they catch the footy.
"Traditionally in our game you catch the ball on your chest. I think we brought into the game that you catch the ball out in front of you.
"It's about using their skills and trying to bring it into our game to make us a better side."
The Storm have also helped a number of AFL teams with their defensive work and that can be seen with the heavier tackling and the significant rise in the number of tackles over the last five years.
While the battle may be on in Western Sydney, the Storm and Melbourne AFL clubs appear to be getting on swimmingly.
Crows' search down to two
Adelaide is believed to narrowed its search for a replacement for Neil Craig down to two and caretaker Mark Bickley is no longer in the hunt, reports the Herald Sun.
The Crows job will go to either West Coast assistant and former Collingwood player Scott Burns or Mick Malthouse's assistant at Collingwood Mark Neeld, according to the tabloid's Jay Clark.
Neeld may not be the only coach to leave the Magpies if he is to get the Crows job. With Malthouse potentially on his way out, Neeld may be joined by defensive coach Scott Watters, who Clark reports is being chased by Fremantle, Port Adelaide and Greater Western Sydney.
The Malthouse coaching tree is no doubt expanding, and not surprisingly considering the recent success of Collingwood, but the exodus from the Lexus Centre could have a major impact on Nathan Buckley in his first year as a head coach.
He will no doubt want to stamp his own authority on the club but Media Watch can't imagine he would want to lose both Neeld and Watters, two of the most highly regarded assistants in the game.
Burns remains the hot favourite though with Friday's Advertiser reporting that Burns is $1.33 with bookmakers while Neeld was listed at $12.
In short
The Brisbane Lions are expected to make an operating loss of "up to $3 million" this year, making it an $8.5 million over the last four years, "a major concern to the League," reports The Australian.
Chris Yarran credits coach Brett Ratten with turning around his career, the Herald Sun reveals in an in-depth profile on the Carlton half-back.
Caroline Wilson has let loose at Paul Dimmattina in her column in The Age after the former Bulldogs midfielder again agitated for the removal of Western Bulldogs president David Smorgon this week, writing: "The most generous interpretation of Paul Dimattina's behaviour this season is that he has been poorly advised, suffers from chronic indecision and lacks the courage of his convictions. A less indulgent assessment is he has damaged his old club, the Western Bulldogs, with snide innuendo in what has been a difficult year."
The views in this article are those of the author and not necessarily those of the AFL or its clubs
