REMEMBER that sunny Saturday when a square-jawed Craig Bellamy, flanked by his players, declared in his finest Winston Churchill tone: "We're not going anywhere."
But they have. Seven of them. And the season's still got seven weeks to run.
Melbourne Storm, who had already lost four senior players last year, are falling apart and will never be what they were.
In the photo (right) taken two days after the Storm salary cap rorts were exposed, the men flanking Bellamy looked as if they were ready to put on a flak jacket and jump in a trench as they walked united towards a waiting media pack.
But four of the five standing closest to their coach - Jeff Lima (Wigan), Brett White (Canberra), Ryan Tandy (Bulldogs) and Ryan Hoffman (Wigan) - have bailed or been pushed from the sinking ship for 2011.
As defiant as Bellamy and the players appeared at the time, developments in the subsequent four months have proved how totally disconnected that scene was with reality. The players' futures were never going to be decided by their own collective desire.
The key men were sitting well away from the frontline with calculators in offices doing equations that would spell out that about a fifth of the club's playing roster had to go.
Greg Inglis's recruitment by Brisbane on Tuesday was the signing that had to happen - not for the Broncos but for the game.
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For all the serviceable players that have been cut or left of their own accord, there was a feeling that one of the big four - Inglis, Cameron Smith, Billy Slater or Cooper Cronk - had to go for the cost-cutting exercise to be genuine.
It wasn't enough for Melbourne to get a few flesh wounds - they needed to lose a limb. And that is what Inglis's departure is.
Because the story has been floating around for five weeks we have all become desensitised to how dramatic it is.
Think about it. The man judged the best player in the game last year has been allowed to walk out the front door with two years left on his contract. And Melbourne will probably have to pay an extra $55,000 or so for him to play for someone else. It's staggering. For Melbourne, life surely cannot get more indignant than that.
The Storm's recent results say everything about the players' state of mind. At home at AAMI Park, when their fans whip up hysterical support, they normally win. But playing for no points gets a bit hard away from home and they have now lost their past five on the road.
Coach Bellamy has no plans to walk out on the Storm but you wonder just how long he can last.
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