Stuart: Storm were too good

Cronulla coach Ricky Stuart conceded after Saturday night's 30-10 loss at Olympic Park that Melbourne's 'quality' proved the difference.

Scores were level at 6-6 approaching the hour mark after Luke Covell had scored in the corner and then landed the sideline conversion but after living up to their pre-match plan to be in the game at that point the Sharks clocked off as the Storm ran in five more tries.

"We worked really hard and spoke about being in the game at the 60th minute because we thought we could get them on the back end of the game, yet they did that to us," Stuart lamented. "It wasn't through luck, they had a better footy team out there than us today."

"I thought we did a great job to the 60th minute … but I think quality got us in the end and we had enough attacking opportunities to score tries tonight but we didn't get over the line."

With the cause not helped by injuries that ended the night for Matt Wright (neck) and Johnny Mannah (back) and also saw Trent Barrett (concussion) and Kade Snowden (arm) spend long periods off, Stuart was disappointed not to capitalise on a glut of possession.

"We talked all week about getting one more pass, getting another pass in our play," he added. "The ball to ground wasn't worrying me, we were just trying something."

"We weren't going to beat Melbourne by being conservative so we wanted to throw the ball around and we wanted to get a bit of second phase and create another pass in our play."

"I'm really disappointed because we are a better attacking football team than what we displayed out there tonight and it comes back down to some players, I wasn't happy with some players tonight."

"Some players out there tonight were off in parts of the game and that was disappointing because we're a better attacking football team than that and I think having Trent pretty much concussed for a lot of the second half didn't help either."