Taylor touts Storm as the best

South Sydney coach Jason Taylor is the latest to anoint reigning premiers the Melbourne Storm the team to beat for this year's title.

Speaking after his team had been blown off Olympic Park by a more desperate and clinical Storm outfit on Sunday night, Taylor was quick to agree that Craig Bellamy's men are the ones to watch in coming weeks.

The Rabbitohs have played six of the finalists in a horror finish to 2008 - upsetting the Warriors and Manly, pushing Canberra and the Roosters and going down to Cronulla before copping the Storm barrage - so Taylor is perhaps well qualified to rate the top eight.

"We, over the last four weeks, have played Manly ... Canberra and the Roosters but the Storm were just a different kettle of fish tonight," Taylor said. "They were just too powerful for us, they're definitely hard to beat down here."

"They don't get to play the grand final down here, so that takes a little bit away from them I think but they were just too strong and they will be very, very hard to beat in my opinion."

Briefly basking in the glory of his team's third consecutive JJ Giltinan Shield as minor premier, Taylor's opposite number Bellamy wouldn't bite when told of Taylor's comments, not wanting to give any upcoming opponents any ammunition.

And when asked to answer the question himself regarding who he believes fans should watch out for in the upcoming finals series, Bellamy played the straightest of straight bats: "At this stage the Warriors, we've got them next week."

But while Taylor was quick to wrap up the Storm heading into next weekend's opening round of the finals, he was still able to find some positives in the heavy defeat that closed what has been a poor season that finished with an 8-16 win-loss record.

"I was really proud of the way the boys just hung in there for the 80 minutes," Taylor added. "It was a tough night, a really tough night. We talked about the fact that we were playing the best team in the competition on their home ground and (that) they were desperate."

"We really wanted to test ourselves against them. In the end we certainly weren't good enough on the scoreboard but we showed some great fight I thought and some real good signs there."

"We wanted to get something out of this game for ourselves and we did. We came up with some great defensive plays I thought to stop some tries at times and the boys really worked hard, I was really proud of the effort."