‘It happens’: Storm star accepting of departures

MELBOURNE Storm forward Christian Welch is okay with several of his star teammates departing the club at season’s end.

Welch, who is also the director of the Rugby League Players Association, isn’t frustrated by the fact that the likes of Brandon Smith, Felise Kaufusi, Jesse Bromwich and Kenny Bromwich have already signed with rivals next season, believing that player movement is merely a product of modern rugby league.

With the NRL being a salary cap league and with the Dolphins entering the competition in 2023, Welch believes that their departures only help create competitive balance, ultimately helping the league prosper.

“It happens,” Welch said on SEN Breakfast. “Every year we seem to lose three or four players, that’s just the salary cap.

“I think it’s a good thing, when you look at the English Premier League only three or four teams can win it every year, but that’s not what we like here in Australia, we like competitive balance.

“That’s one of the mechanisms that maintains that [competitive balance], every fan base every year has a bit of hope that on their day they can beat anyone in the competition.

“Obviously, as a player, you’d love to be able to keep those players, but yeah, I totally get it.”

While the Storm have several stars on the way out, their squad still looms as one of the competition’s strongest in 2022.

Melbourne bowed out in a preliminary final loss to Penrith after finishing as minor premiers last year, and Welch said he and his teammates are keen to right those wrongs this season.

“It was such a disappointing end for such a special season along the way,” he said.

“We put in a lot of effort, we worked really hard, and we were based up in Queensland for a second year straight.

“It’s thoroughly disappointing, but that’s how finals football works, it’s the beauty of those big games.

“We just weren’t good enough, we were beaten by a team that went on to win the premiership.

“The hunger is there, we’ve spoken about it a fair bit over the pre-season, we’ve watched a fair bit of clips specific to that game.

“We’re pretty fired up to start the season pretty hard.”

The Storm begin their 2022 season with a round one clash against the Wests Tigers at CommBank Stadium.

– BY LACHLAN GELEIT/ SEN