Coach Craig Bellamy admits the Storm's salary cap scandal has been 'frustrating at times' but says the club has no choice but to get on with playing games of football.
After the initial shock of the revelation of Melbourne's salary-cap cheating in April, which led to massive penalties from the NRL, the issue was in the news again last week following the release of the Deloitte report commissioned by News Limited following an investigation of the club's books.
And having on Monday had it confirmed for him that favourite son Ryan Hoffman, Kiwi forward Jeff Lima and five-eighth Brett Finch - who was already resigned to moving on even before the revelations - were leaving, Bellamy conceded things have been tough.
"(We've) probably been hanging on by the skin of our teeth a little bit," Bellamy told Storm TV.
"It's been frustrating at times ... not quite knowing at times what's going on has been a little bit disruptive."
"There has been a lot of things happening but our mentality and focus has been that our role is to play footy and my job ... is to coach footy and that's all we can do really."
"Having players move on is a tough thing, especially guys that don't particularly want to go and we don't want them to go, but that's where we are at the moment and to see guys when they tell their team-mates they're leaving, it's pretty emotional and upsetting for everyone."
Coming off three successive losses for the first time since he took over as coach at the start of the 2003 season, Bellamy is hoping that his players' hard work and endeavour of recent weeks is finally rewarded after two, two and seven-point losses.
"I think we have been playing strongly, we just haven't quite got a result the last three weeks but hopefully a win is not too far away," he added.
"It'd be nice this week but we'll keep battling away.""I've been really proud of the way the players have kept competing in every game that we've played and certainly every game we gave ourselves a chance to win except probably the Warriors game we never really got that close I suppose."
"But we led in the other two games and just couldn't quite hang on. We're putting plenty of effort in at the moment there's just a couple of little things where the execution has been missing and hopefully for the last seven weeks we can find that and finish on a strong note."
Set to rest some of his weary players in the final seven weeks of what has been a trying season, and give some of his young squad members a chance to show what they're capable of, Bellamy expects a tough clash with the Panthers.
"It was obviously a disappointing week for them last week when they had a good lead and got run down but Parramatta can do that to you when they get a bit of ball and a bit of roll on and Jarryd Hayne is playing his best footy," Bellamy said.
"They'll certainly be looking to bounce back from that."
"They're not running second in the competition for nothing and they beat the leaders (the Dragons) a couple of weeks ago quite convincingly."
"They're a big, strong, physical side and they do the basics really well and we know they'll be coming down here to rebound from last week and it will be a tough game."