Storm players get a finals warning

COACH Craig Bellamy has warned Melbourne Storm players to take control of their own destiny.

Storm remains a red-hot favourite for tonight’s home preliminary final against Brisbane and, with the players fit and firing, has no excuses.

Bellamy is likely to field an unchanged line-up against the Broncos after any niggles picked up in the qualifying final against Parramatta were ironed out during the week off.

He has spoken to players about taking the chance to play in another grand final.

“Without putting any pressure on the group, you don’t get these opportunities too often, so you want to be taking them,’’ Bellamy said.

A bumper crowd is expected at AAMI Park. More than 23,000 tickets have been sold.

Storm has had the wood on the Broncos, winning 13 of their 16 matches since the 2009 preliminary final.

Bellamy dismissed the one- sided record as a “nice stat”.

Darius Boyd and Tevita Pangai Junior return for the banged-up Broncos and Corey Oates and Sam Thaiday have been cleared after bouts of concussion.

Bellamy suspected the bigbodied Broncos would plan to rattle Storm up the middle and then share the ball around creative halves Anthony Milford and Kodi Nikorima.

Bellamy will draw level tonight with legend Jack Gibson on 394 NRL games coached.

Ahead of him are only Broncos coach Wayne Bennett (787), Tim Sheens (669) and Brian Smith (601).