Defence is something Melbourne prides itself on but on Saturday night it proved their undoing.
Storm conceded 38 points to the Titans – the highest tally they have allowed in a game since Round 4, 2014.
That included two tries in the final six minutes as the Gold Coast snatched the points in a thrilling affair at Suncorp Stadium.
That now means Storm have conceded more than 20 points in three of their past four games. To put that into context, they allowed scores of 20+ against them on just four occasions all of last season.
That disappointment was not lost on the coach after the game.
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“We pride ourselves on defence at this Club and I can’t remember a poorer defensive effort than what we put up tonight,” Craig Bellamy said.
“It is a real worry for me to be quite honest… to score 36 points and still lose, it just isn’t on.
“We’ve given up a few points in the last few weeks and it was a bit of a flow on tonight.”
The contest was a sea-sawing affair that saw the lead changes hands rapidly throughout the match.
Storm went on a first half burst of three tries in nine minutes, the Titans then came up with the next four in a row before Melbourne responded with three more tries, this time in less than six minutes.
Holding an eight-point lead with 10 minutes to play should have seen them home but the game once again flipped on its head as the Titans surged home with two late tries to escape with the win.
An inability to control the flow of the game left the Storm skipper rather forlorn.
“We never really got into any sort of rhytym throughout the whole game. It was just a bit of a to-and-fro,” Cameron Smith said.
“In the second half, less than 10 minutes to go and we are ahead, we should be winning those games and we didn’t.
“The team was quite frustrated out there but all because of our own doing, nothing else.”
