Storm regain trio for finals face-off

“We’ll go with who we think is the right guy for our team.”

Probed further on the horses for courses rotation, Bellamy said: “We’ve been doing it all year, so we’ve had plenty of practice on it”.

Livewires Hughes and Croft could be among three finals debutants for Melbourne, with a further five Storm players having made five or less finals appearances.

Smith (33*) and Slater (29*), in contrast, have combined for 62 NRL finals.

Bellamy yesterday hailed the significance of having Slater back in the line-up.

“That’s a lot of finals,” Bellamy said.

“You’d like to think the experience those guys have got playing in big games over a lot of years is going to rub off on them (younger players) and hopefully that will add to our performance.”

No stranger to September, Bellamy has taken the Storm to the finals in 14 of the past 15 seasons.

But the premiership mastermind still gets a “different feeling” in his stomach.

“September is when the big games roll around, sometimes your dreams are made and sometimes your dreams are broken, sometimes you just have to roll with the punches,” Bellamy said.

“My mentality, and I think our team’s mentality, is make sure what we’re doing today we do as well as we can and then hopefully that will help us play a good game.

“If we start thinking about what might happen or start thinking about the result, that ain’t going to help no one.”