Sustained success has played a significant role but so too has the way the club has leaned into links with Australian rules football
It was at the darkest time of the otherwise glittering existence of the Storm that the club’s standing in the Melbourne sporting landscape became truly clear.
The club was just 13 years old. It had tasted extraordinary success for a club so young, winning a premiership in its second year and had started a golden age with Craig Bellamy at the helm and Cameron Smith, Billy Slater and Cooper Cronk beginning to emerge as the elite players of their generation.Yet Melbourne as a city had paid them little heed. The self-proclaimed “sporting capital of the world” had entrenched views as to the sports that mattered and the sports that did not.
On a warm Sunday evening in April, just under 24,000 Melburnians showed up to stand shoulder to shoulder with the team. Some were rugby league fans. Some were outraged locals. It was the second largest home crowd the Storm had pulled, for a game that was, in essence, for nothing but one which meant everything. It was the moment the Storm truly became embraced by Melburnians.
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