Storm coach Craig Bellamy was far from satisfied after he watched his side escape with a narrow one-point victory over the Warriors in the annual Anzac Day match-up at AAMI Park on Thursday night.
Storm were second best for much of the round seven contest and had to rely on a late Brodie Croft field goal to pull off the come-from-behind triumph 13-12 in the 77th minute.
While happy to bank another two competition points and join the Roosters at the top of the Telstra Premiership ladder, Bellamy was hardly thrilled with the overall performance from his side.
The Storm made no line-breaks in the match compared with the Warriors' two, and had just five offloads compared to 11. But possession, errors and kicks in play were evenly shared.
"It's always nice to get the two points, but I always look a little bit deeper," Bellamy said.
"I am more concerned by our performance to be quite honest.
Match Highlights: Storm v Warriors
"It is still nice to know that when things didn’t go our way, we still found a way and we couldn’t do that last week [against the Roosters]."
Last week the Storm were on the other side of a one-point contest falling in golden point to a Latrell Mitchell field goal.
During that game the Storm squandered a bevy of opportunities to win and Bellamy was happy that his side were able to execute better in the closing stages on Anzac Day.
"We handled that tonight a little bit better than we did last week," he said.
"As soon as Brodie kicked the ball I just looked at the people behind the posts and a lot of them rose out of their seats and I was thinking 'He's kicked this'.
"Then I saw it hit the post and I thought it bounced straight back and I wasn't quite sure what had happened until the referee had put his arm up."
Croft field goal puts the Storm in front
Bellamy reserved praise for Croft, who now has two match-winning field goals to his name following an effort that sunk the Cowboys in 2017 in just his second appearance for the Storm.
"He has come up with a couple of big field goals for us in the last couple of years and, after last week, it was really nice for him to knock one over," Bellamy said.
"We need to give our guys some credit for hanging in there even though we weren’t playing our best and playing the way we wanted to."