In the history of professional sport throughout the world, there would be but a handful of coaches who have retired on their own terms. Coaching is such a cutthroat, results-driven business that it chews up and spits out so many careers. Melbourne Storm coach Craig Bellamy is not sure when he'll retire, the club has left it to him to make that call, renewing his contract on a yearly basis. After 23 highly successful NRL seasons at the Storm, Bellamy has earned the right to hang up the clipboard when it suits him best.
In the face of endless questions on the secrets behind his success, Bellamy and the Storm allowed a documentary team from Stan to follow him around last year, as the club made yet another NRL grand final, the tenth of his tenure. The documentary which first airs on Sunday March 9 provides some very simple answers. Simple to understand, implemented by a uniquely driven personality, and enforced relentlessly.
It begins with recruitment, where the Storm's mantra is that they are willing to compromise on talent in order to ensure that a player has the right character. The wrong character, however talented, can destroy the culture of a club.
From there, Bellamy insists on consistency. Every player must be consistent in everything they do for the club. A consistent player is both mentally and physically tough. Conversely if you work on a player's mental and physical toughness, you improve his consistency.
Finally, it's all about hard work. Success is never achieved without hard work. It is a truism that Bellamy's father, who laboured in the cement works of Portland, NSW, drummed into him as child. It is a truism that he instills in his players and the results are self-evident, even if the younger generations need a little more convincing.
"Yeah I have found that, you can preach it all you like, I don't know whether it is taught in schools or when you are playing junior footy, if the coaches push that into them enough, I'm not quite sure. It is obviously a different generation, but for me the rule is still the same for whatever generation you are, I don't think it is pushed as hard as it used to be," Bellamy explained to ESPN.
Bellamy's successful methods have earned him plenty of praise and not just from within rugby league circles. Current Tottenham Hotspur coach Ange Postecoglou, who shared the AAMI Park facility with Bellamy when he was coaching A-League side, Melbourne Victory, recognised his greatness.
"Like most other people in our vocation, we gravitate or look towards people who we feel like their success is more meaningful than just what is on the surface. I was fortunate enough to share a workspace with the Storm. Being coaches we were both probably the first into the building every day, he was in the gym, I was in the canteen, which kind of shows the differences in our outlook," Postecoglou says in Revealed: Craig Bellamy - Inside the Storm.
"When you are fortunate enough to rub shoulders with success, if you are smart enough, you let some of it rub off on you.
"As a coach, the job does everything in its power to change you, whether it is chasing success or dealing with failure or adulation or criticism and the ones who are the best are the ones who don't [change].
"The challenge with staying at the one club for a long time, particularly a successful club is that you know at some point you need to regenerate, it takes a real discipline and clarity to do that, a real energy."
The ample good times have been tempered by some tough periods during Bellamy's Storm tenure. The documentary covers the darkest days during the 2010 salary cap scandal, a systematic circumvention of the league's rules which led to the stripping of two premiership titles and three minor premierships, as well as forcing the Storm to play out the 2010 season nailed to the bottom of the ladder, stripped of all competition points and the ability to earn any more.
Initially the players asked whether they could back off on the training, seeing how there was literally nothing to play for, and Bellamy relented. But before long he felt that he couldn't continue coaching that way, and offered his resignation to the players. A joke or two later and they all agreed to return to the Bellamy way -- hard work.
Two years later, having shed at least 10 players in the aftermath of the scandal, the Storm held the premiership trophy aloft again, in a moment that Bellamy describes as one of the proudest of his coaching career.
Bellamy's ability to continually squeeze the best out of his players, even in the face of adversity, has the club happy to continue with his current arrangement. The daunting task of finding their next coach is something they are hoping to delay as long as possible.
"It will be hard to find a replacement, let's not kid ourselves. I have said to people it is like going into bat after Don Bradman, it is going to be big shoes to fill. He doesn't have an email address, he hardly responds to a text, but when I think about it he doesn't have these things so he can stay focused on the task at hand which is to coach the football team to the best of his ability," Storm Chairman Matt Tripp explained.
So, how many more seasons will Belllamy lay out the markers on Storm's training fields? A creature of habit, who legitimately worries about what he would do with his time once retired, for now it is easier for Bellamy to just continue in his winning ways.
"I don't know whether it is always going to be my decision, I might get tapped on the shoulder at some stage and be told: 'It's time, 20-odd years, we need something new'. Anyway it will work itself out as we go, at the moment I'm just worrying about Round 1 and how we are going to compete in that," said Bellamy.
The Storm's Round 1 opponent is Parramatta, who are now coached by Jason Ryles, a man very familiar to Bellamy and the club.
"He is a smart guy Jason, he's a good guy, he worked here, he played here as well, so he'll know what we see as important in games of footy and he'll be trying to counteract that. He'll have his team playing to their strengths and he'll know what he needs from his team to play well and we know it is going to be a real tough game for us down here," Bellamy said of Ryles.
"For us, we are just going to have to concentrate on ourselves and look to improve from our trial form because it just wasn't good enough and I don't think we were competitive enough and we are going to have to fight a bit harder than what we did in the last couple of weeks."
The Storm have never lost a first-round game during Bellamy's time in charge, and although it is not something they talk about, it is a testimony to their preparation and readiness to start every season on the front foot.
They just keep working harder to ensure continued success, it is the Craig Bellamy way.
The Stan Original Documentary Revealed: Craig Bellamy - Inside the Storm premieres Sunday March 9, only on Stan.