Melbourne coach Craig Bellamy has paid tribute to his representative players after all eight backed up in Monday night's win over Newcastle.
Kangaroos Cameron Smith, Greg Inglis, Billy Slater, Israel Folau, Ryan Hoffman and Michael Crocker, as well as Kiwis Jeremy Smith and Adam Blair, all played as the Storm overcame the Knights 18-4 at Olympic Park.
And while Bellamy had expected most if them to perform to their usual high levels because they've played rep football before, he was delighted with the way Folau, Jeremy Smith and Blair turned it on.
"We had eight guys backing up from the Test on Friday night (and) we lost our half-back (Cooper Cronk) for a couple of days as well, he went up there on standby, so I thought that was a real good effort," Bellamy said.
"It's not always about the physical side when these guys back up from rep games, it's about the mental letdown. It's not easy, especially for those young guys."
"It's easy for these guys," he said nodding in Cam Smith's direction, "because they've been through it before but Folau and Jeremy Smith, he's never backed up after a rep game and nor has Adam Blair and I thought they were tremendous tonight those guys."
"Newcastle played really well and we had to stick in there and show some patience with guys that were a little bit leg weary and also a couple of them were probably a little bit mentally down from playing that Test."
It may have taken the Storm more than 50 minutes to score the first points of the game despite dominating possession and field position, but Bellamy and his captain were pleased that the players heeded the coach's half-time message.
"We expected that, the Knights have been in great form and they came down here and they defended really well in the first half," Bellamy said. "Both halves we had a lot of footy and a lot of field position (and) they did make us work really hard for it."
"But I was really happy (with) the composure of our guys, we certainly didn't panic and we showed a lot of patience and at the end of the day we wore 'em down and scored some points at the end."
"It was a bit frustrating the way we were trying to score I think, we were trying to go round them a lot and that's why we lost a couple of games earlier in the year, we went away from how we play well and that's through the middle," Smith added.
"That was probably the main thing, the frustration, but we spoke at half-time about being patient and although we had a lot of the ball we knew that if we just kept playing to our game like Craig said that in the end we'd get some points."
"And that's what we did, we kicked long in the second half and really made them work to come out of their own half and we got a couple of good tries to Israel and Quinny got one."
There was some bad news for the winners though with Blair suffering a cut eye that resulted in his hospitalisation for possible plastic surgery after Storm medical staff were unable to repair the damage.