Melbourne centre Will Chambers grabbed a hat-trick as the Storm stretched their unbeaten start to the season to a club record eight NRL matches with a 32-14 win over the Warriors on Wednesday.
Chambers broke a 14-14 deadlock with 10 minutes remaining in the Anzac Day match at AAMI Park and then capped the win with his third try, which like the others came off a Billy Slater pass.
Fellow centre Dane Nielsen also finished the match with a second try as the scoreline blew out as the clock wound down.
The Warriors have won three of their past four clashes, including last year’s preliminary final, and it looked early on like they would ruin another Storm party.
But the competition front-runners dug deep to hold their bogey side at bay.
The Warriors showed no fear of taking on the Storm and used their big forwards to pile on the pressure early, forcing the home side into some uncharacteristic errors, and they took a 6-0 lead through athletic winger Bill Tupou.
The visitors suffered an early blow when they lost dangerous fullback Kevin Locke to injury just six minutes into the match, forcing Krisnan Inu to the back.
Their Test halfback Shaun Johnson didn’t start after failing to overcome a shoulder injury suffered in last week’s international.
Two ball-carrying errors by Inu proved crucial and led to two Storm tries.
The last was a school-boy error as he carried the ball from the restart in one hand and dropped it without a Storm player in sight with Justin O’Neill scoring in the ensuing play to give his side a 14-10 lead.
The Storm were forced to recover from a 6-0 deficit after a sloppy start.
The Warriors sent the ball wide with hard-working centre Ben Henry finding his winger Tupou, who dived across the line to open the scoring.
Tupou kept his side in the match with another sensational four-pointer in the 64th minute.
He ran on to a kick by Pita Godinet, who replaced Johnson in the starting line-up, into the in-goal and managed to somehow ground it before he dived over the dead ball line.
That tied the match up 14-14 and it looked like it would be a thriller before the benchmark side of the competition showed their class to pull away for a deserved victory.