Melbourne skipper Cam Smith says he and his team-mates have still enjoyed the 2010 season despite playing for no points because of the camaraderie in the playing group.
The Storm rounded off the year from hell with their 14th win of the season on Sunday at AAMI Park, running away to a 34-4 demolition of the undermanned Knights and while he admitted it's been a tough campaign Smith was nonetheless pleased with what the team has done under duress.
"I guess in a way we built up for the last match but it's always a pretty sad day when you finish your season, particularly when it's not in a grand final," Smith said after the game, in which he went past 1000 career points.
"As hard as it's been we've been able to prepare ourselves for this day and we've enjoyed this year."
"There's been some hard weeks, there's been some hard days (and) there's been some really hard matches that we've had to try and stick in and in the end not (been able to) get a result but we've really enjoyed our season together."
"We've made sure that we did that and I think all the boys can be very proud of what we've done this year."
"I think today we equalled the amount of wins that we had last year and I think that people probably don't think that's a big issue but it is here for us."
"We were playing for no points this year so it's not bad to finish the year with 14 wins playing for nothing."
Coach Craig Bellamy didn't spend much of the week leading up to the game focusing on the emotion of the players who will now depart, Greg Inglis, Ryan Hoffman and Brett White among them and Smith said that helped with the result.
"I think early on Craig spoke about what we needed this week and what the occasion needed and what it was going to be like today," Smith added.
"But I thought we kept our minds away from the boys leaving and the big crowd and being our last game together, we handled that quite well and I think emotions were quite high when we first started."
The key to the result for Smith, as it has been all year in the trying circumstances, was that the players continued to work hard for each other.
"We got some good early ball and we scored a couple of quick tries but ... from midway through the first half, that's the way it's been pretty much all season," he said.
"We tried some things and it wasn't working and the execution ended up dropping a bit but as Craig mentioned defensively we were good."
"The effort was still there, it's been there all year, it's something that hasn't wavered and it's really what kept us in the match."
"We knew that we'd prepared well and that if we got our hands on some ball and got some field position that we'd be back in the match."
As a result of the occasion Smith let Jeff Lima and then Hoffman both take shots at goal in the final stages of the game with the Knights too far adrift to threaten, while Inglis, Hoffman, White and Aiden Tolman all scored tries in their final match for the club.
But Smith was adamant that apart from Lima and