Bellamy frustrated with loss

One word summed up how coach Craig Bellamy and captain Cam Smith felt after Melbourne went down to Manly on Sunday: frustration.

Having contained the damage to a 12-4 deficit at the break after dominating the opening half everywhere except the scoreboard despite running against a gale, the Storm rolled to a 16-12 lead after 54 minutes with the first two tries after the resumption.

But just like had been the case in the first half, when Joseph Tomane's 12th-minute try was the home side's only score before the break, Tomane's 52nd-minute four-pointer was to be the Storm's final score of the game even though Melbourne had countless more chances as the Sea Eagles ran out 20-16 victors.

And while the Storm are still hanging on to fourth spot on the NRL ladder with two games remaining - at home against the Roosters and away to the Warriors - both Bellamy and Smith were left shaking their heads afterwards.

"Our attack (was the most disappointing aspect)," Bellamy said just days after labelling his team's defence soft in the loss to Newcastle. "It was very limp (and) certainly not what we practiced."

"I thought our defence was probably as bad as it has been all year in the first half against the Knights. I was very happy with the way that we responded to that."

"We finished the Newcastle game on a good note with the footy … and were basically hoping to carry on with that attack tonight but it was a long way away from that. You take the wind into consideration but we should've been a lot better with the ball than we were."

"We created a lot of opportunities for ourselves today but we had a lot of trouble capitalising," Smith added. "Defence has always been a strong part of our game (but) when you have teams on their own try-line and can't capitalise on that it's concerning for us."

"Last week it was defence, the Knights were running through us and then this week I think we contained Manly really well. I think we really need to look at our whole match today and have a chat about what's going wrong there."

"It's just more frustration, coming off the field knowing that you could've won a match but you let it slip out of your grip. We're not getting the all-round performances that we need."

"One week it's our defence letting us down, the next it's our attack and the following week it's our discipline. The small things that let us down each week, that's the thing that's frustrating."

Bellamy though isn't ready to write his team off even though it hasn't cemented a finals berth because star centre Greg Inglis could yet be back at his disposal before season's end, pending his next appearance in court to answer charges of assault on Wednesday.

"I know we're disappointed with certain parts of our game, the inconsistency of our game," Bellamy added. "So I'm not worried about big picture at the moment I'm just worried about the little picture at the moment and it's not a nice picture."

"Being in the four is nice, it's certainly better than being out of the four. Everyone's talking about semi-finals (but) if we lose our next two games we aren't in the semi-finals."

"We're not that far away from it, they're one of the form teams in the competition and we could've quite easily won today but we didn't and they deserved to win the game at the end. We just need to fix a couple of things up and I'm sure we can still be a force."