Satisfied Melbourne coach Craig Bellamy has praised his players' courage under fire after they held a fast finishing Cronulla line-up at bay to open their premiership defence with a 14-10 victory on Saturday night.
Leading by 10 points with 11 minutes remaining, the Storm appeared in control of proceedings before Sharks prop Luke Douglas barrelled over in the 70th minute to slash the deficit to just four points.
Douglas' late strike ignited the pro-Sharks crowd as the hosts through everything at Bellamy's men in a tense finish, but the reigning premier held firm to secure a valuable two points away from home.
"That was the big thing that we did hold our nerve and when he scored there was still 10 minutes to go and we were under the pump a little bit," Bellamy said.
"I was very happy with the way that each and every set after that without the ball we looked pretty composed, and Cronulla got another couple of sets inside our half so I just they did a good job there."
"It was a tough game ... we thought it was going to be a little bit like the Leeds game especially when we heard there might be a bit of rain around and that's how we prepared."
"It certainly wasn't a great spectacle I didn't think, but at the end of the day we probably did what we needed to do and got the points."
"One good thing about this side is they're pretty adaptable to whatever sort of play we think we can hopefully stick in and hang in there in those sorts of games."
While Bellamy labelled the Storm's first-half attack 'poor', the coach hailed the decision to play skipper Cameron Smith at half-back in the absence of Cooper Cronk (groin/hip) a definite success.
"I think it worked pretty good," he said of the skipper's move to the No.7 jumper.
"Obviously it is a little bit foreign to Cameron but I thought he handled it really well for us and I thought Finchy (Brett Finch) really stepped up in the second half and made a real difference for us."
"Obviously when Cooper comes back Cameron will be going back to dummy half ... but at the moment we think that's the best option for us."
Cronk was one of four frontline players missing for the season opener through injury alongside Brett White (shoulder), Sika Manu (leg) and Todd Lowrie (groin).
And there was more bad news on the injury front with representative back rower Ryan Hoffman suffering shoulder and knee injuries which are expected to keep him sidelined for some time.
"He had a bad night out Hoff," Bellamy said.
"He's done his AC joint (in the ninth minute) and they needled him up and said 'he's right to go again', so it wasn't anything too serious, but he was only back on for about four or five minutes and he's done his medial ligament."
"So that's not such a great injury for us ... they're thinking it's more than a grade-one so he'll have a bit of time on the sideline by the sound of it."