Melbourne Storm

Inaugural season: 1998

Home field: AAMI Park, Melbourne, Australia

Owner: Bart Campbell, Matthew Tripp, and Gerry Ryan

Team colors: Purple, navy blue, white, and gray

Overview

The Melbourne Storm is a professional rugby team that plays in Australia’s National Rugby League (NRL). The Storm joined the NRL in the late 1990s in the aftermath of a major shakeup in Australian rugby. Since that time, Melbourne has been one of the league’s most successful teams, posting an NRL-best winning percentage of 63 percent by 2020. The Storm have won multiple premierships since entering the league but had two titles stripped away because of salary cap violations. Among the franchise’s greatest players was NRL ironman Cameron Smith, who set league records for games played and points scored prior to his retirement in 2021.

History

Rugby was invented in England in the early nineteenth century, originating as a variation of English football or soccer as it is known in North America. The sport’s name comes from its birthplace at the Rugby School in Warwickshire, England. Like football/soccer, the object of the game is to get a ball into the opponent’s goal area, but in rugby, players can pick up and carry the ball and opponents can tackle the ball carrier. The sport was introduced to Australia by the British in the mid-nineteenth century and began to spread across the nation. In 1980, a group of amateur players formed the first nation’s first professional league: the New South Wales Rugby League (NSWRL).

The NSWRL consisted of teams based exclusively in Sydney and its suburbs for the first seventy-plus years of its existence. In 1982, teams were added in the nation’s capital of Canberra and in Wollongong, a city about 45 miles (72 kilometers) south of Sydney. As the NSWRL grew outside the state of New South Wales in the late 1980s, league officials and private business interests began to consider expanding across the nation. In 1995, the NSWRL reformed as the Australian Rugby League (ARL), while a corporate-backed rival league known as the Super League began play in 1997. That year, ten teams played in the Super League and twelve in the AFL. With twenty-two professional rugby teams playing across Australia, Super League CEO John Ribot wanted to place a team in Melbourne, the nation’s second-largest city.

Ribot resigned as head of the Super League and joined former Brisbane Broncos player Chris Johns to try to bring a team to Melbourne. They received approval in 1997 and were set to begin play in 1998. However, by this time, the financial difficulties of sustaining two rival leagues forced the ARL and Super League to give up the two-league experiment after just one season. In 1998, the leagues agreed to merge and reformed as the National Rugby League (NRL). The Super League’s Melbourne expansion team was absorbed into the reformed NRL. Team officials built a roster by signing players from the now-defunct Super League teams the Perth Reds and Hunter Mariners.

The original name of the Melbourne franchise was to have been the Mavericks, complete with a gunslinging cowboy as its logo. However, after team officials were advised that the name and logo were too “American,” they considered going with the names Flying Foxes or Trams, a reference to a popular form of public transportation in the city. In the end, Ribot and Johns decided on the name Storm to convey a theme of lighting quickness and power. Purple was chosen as the team’s signature color, with navy blue added as a nod to Melbourne’s home state of Victoria, whose official colors are navy blue and silver. The Storm logo featured an angry-looking figure known as “Storm Man” rising from a cloud ready to throw a lightning bolt. In 2018, the logo was redesigned to lose the cloud, but kept Storm Man and the lightning bolt.

The Storm went 17–6 with one draw and making it to the finals series in its first season of existence. The finals series is a playoff tournament featuring the league’s top teams. In 1999, Melbourne advanced to the Grand Final—the league’s championship game—and won its first premiership with a 20–18 victory over the St. George Illawarra Dragons. The Storm trailed in the game 14–0 at half, before coming back for the win. The victory was historic on several levels. It marked the fastest championship of any expansion team in league history and the attendance of 107,999 was also an all-time record. The game was played at Sydney’s Stadium Australia, which was built for the 2000 Summer Olympic Games. The stadium capacity has since been reduced, meaning that the record is unlikely to be broken.

After struggling in the early 2000s, Melbourne rebounded to become one of the most dominant teams of the decade. The Storm made the finals series each season from 2003–2009 and advanced to four consecutive Grand Finals from 2006–2009. Melbourne finished as the runner-up in 2006 and 2008 and won the matchups in 2007 and 2009. However, in 2010, an NRL investigation discovered that the team had been paying some of its players illegally to keep their contracts off the books and under the league-mandated salary cap. Melbourne was punished with a $1.6 million fine and stripped of its championships from 2007 and 2009. The team was also declared ineligible for the 2010 finals series and barred from earning points during that season.

After the repercussions from the scandal ended, the Storm won the 2010 Grand Final over the Canterbury-Bankstown Bulldogs. Melbourne advanced to three straight Grand Finals from 2016–2018, defeating North Queensland in 2017 for its third official championship. From 1998 through the 2020 NRL season, the Storm accumulated a record of 396 wins and 200 losses, for a league-best 63 percent winning percentage. Melbourne finished the 2022 season in fifth place, its lowest finish since 2014.

Prior to 2010, the team played at Olympic Park Stadium, a facility built for the 1956 Melbourne Olympic Games. The Storm had such a home-field advantage at the venue that it was nicknamed the “Graveyard” because other team’s hopes died there. Since 2010, the team plays its home games at the 30,000-seat capacity AAMI Park.

Notable players

Despite being a relatively new franchise, the Melbourne Storm have had several players leave their imprint on the Australian rugby record books. Cameron Smith is considered to be the best Australian rugby player in the modern era. He began playing for the Storm in 2002 and stayed with the team for his entire career before retiring just prior to the start of the 2021 season. Smith played in an NRL-record 430 games and held the mark for most career points scored with 2,786. Smith was part of three Melbourne Grand Final victories and named the Dally M Player of the Year in 2006 and 2017. The Dally M award is presented to the most outstanding player in the regular season.

Billy Slater played his entire career with Melbourne from 2003–2018. While Smith’s specialty was goal kicks, Slater was a prolific try scorer for the Storm. A try is scored when a player touches the ball to the ground in an opponent’s goal area. Slater was the franchise leader in tries with 190, a figure that also ranks second all-time in league history. His 760 total points scored also ranks third in team history. Slater won the Dally M award in 2011 and the Clive Churchill Medal in the Storm’s Grand Final victory in 2017. The medal is awarded to the most outstanding player in the championship game. Slater also won the honor in 2009, although the team was later stripped of that title. In 2020, the team announced that Smith and Slater would be honored with bronze statues to be built outside of AAMI Park.

Cooper Cronk played with the Storm from 2004–2017 before leaving to join the Sydney Roosters. During his time with Melbourne, Cronk scored 92 tries, third most in club history. He was named the Dally M Player of the Year in 2013 and 2016, and won the Clive Churchill Medal in the 2012 Grand Final. Matt Geyer was second on the franchise list with 113 tries scored from 1998–2008. Geyer was ranked fourth on the franchise points list with 662. He was the only Storm player to score four tries in a single game more than once, accomplishing the feat in 1999 and 2000.

Bibliography

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Kennedy, Paul. Stormcloud: Greed, Betrayal and Success—Melbourne Storm’s Demise and Resurrection. Hardie Grant Books, 2013.

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“Melbourne Storm Logo.” 1000 Logos, 2022, 1000logos.net/melbourne-storm-logo/. Accessed 21 Mar. 2024.

Smith, Mike. “Everything You Need to Know About Melbourne Storm.” Best in Australia, 2024, bestinau.com.au/melbourne-storm-nrl/. Accessed 21 Mar. 2024.

“Storm to Honour Slater, Smith With Statues.” National Rugby League, 2024, www.nrl.com/news/2020/01/22/slater-smith-to-get-statues-at-aami-park/. Accessed 21 Mar. 2024.

Ward, Roy. “'The Right Time to Finish': Storm Great Smith Retires from Rugby League.” The Sydney Morning Herald, 10 Mar. 2021, www.smh.com.au/sport/nrl/melbourne-storm-great-cameron-smith-retires-from-rugby-league-20210310-p579e3.html. Accessed 21 Mar. 2024.