They may have finished with the two competition points but Melbourne Storm skipper Cameron Smith was quick to remind his NRL team about how close they came to missing out.

The Storm left it until after fulltime to snatch an unlikely 28-24 victory over St George Illawarra, with winger Young Tonumaipea diving across in the corner at AAMI Park.

While happy with the win, Smith wasn’t satisfied with the manner of it.

“To come back from where we were, it was a fair effort,” he said of the 14-point deficit they made up in the last quarter of the match.

“It was a good last 20 minutes but it’s still frustrating.

“I don’t want to take anything away from our win but I wish we could play like that early in the game.

Melbourne’s biggest winning margin this season has been eight points, with the other three by four or less points.

Against the Dragons they were again hurt by poor ball control.

“We were turning over cheap ball and putting a lot of pressure on ourselves and it’s an area that we need to look at,” Smith said.

“We’re hurting ourselves at the moment and we really need to look back on what we did and say, `this is what were capable of doing so lets do it for 80 minutes’.”

Smith doesn’t want his team to change their tactics to show more flair, but does want them to do the hard work that earned victories.

“It’s running through their middle with numbers but were just taking too much juice out of ourselves by turning the ball over and giving penalties away and that hurts our attack.”

Former Bulldog Ben Roberts impressed in his first start at five-eighth since round one.

Coach Craig Bellamy said it wasn’t easy to leave Ben Hampton out but was happy with his new playmaker’s contribution.

“He was finding his feet early but he came up with a few really good plays for us and he defended well all game,” Bellamy said of Roberts.

The Storm’s next challenge is on Sunday against struggling Canberra in the nation’s capital.