Melbourne skipper Cam Smith was struggling to come to terms with his team's shock exit from the NRL title race on Saturday night at the hands of the Warriors, saying he didn't see it coming.
Smith's confidence stemmed from the fact that the Storm had finished as minor premiers and then started their finals campaign with a comfortable 18-8 home win over the Knights to earn a week off.
But while they scored first on Saturday night as they looked to book a grand final berth against Manly, Melbourne conceded the lead within a dozen minutes and had to play catch-up thereafter.
They did briefly draw level just before half-time only for Smith to give away a penalty for a strip and with it the lead, and from there the Warriors dominated the second half en route to a gutsy 20-12 win.
"To comment on us getting knocked out tonight, well I don't really know what to say at the moment to be honest, I'm in shock that we've been beaten," Smith said.
"I was really confident coming into this game tonight, we had great preparation for the last two weeks, we had a week off (for) all the boys to freshen up and we knew what we had to do tonight to win."
A defiant Smith also took the opportunity to take a swipe at critics who gave the Storm little hope of even making the finals this year let alone finishing on top.
"Not too many people really rated us at the start of the season, not too many people had high expectations of this team or this club," he added.
"But I hope we really proved a lot of people wrong with the culture that we have here and why this club is strong and what's a successful club."
Smith had nothing but praise for the Warriors though, who he said simply played better as they forced the Storm to constantly battle to work the ball out of their own half, particularly after the break.
"Yeah they certainly played well tonight, the Warriors," Smith said.
"We were just playing out of our own end all night."
"So there was plenty of effort there but we just couldn't get field position, couldn't get too many opportunities to try and build pressure on them really."
"All we needed was an opportunity but it just didn't present itself and that was due to the Warriors' defence, they kept turning up and they played really well."
"But the boys kept trying, there's no doubt about that, and tonight just 50-50 things didn't go our way and we just couldn't really get a roll on."