Melbourne's rollercoaster NRL pre-season has continued with skipper Jesse Bromwich barred from training with the team in the lead up to round one after his son contracted COVID-19.
The Kiwi Test prop won't be able to attend AAMI Park for training or team meetings for the next week while he isolates with his family at home.
Provided he doesn't also contract the virus he will still be able to play in the opening round clash with Wests Tigers on Saturday, March 12 at CommBank Stadium.
Bromwich and Christian Welch were only announced as 2022 co-captains on Wednesday.
While it's a blow for the Storm, they at least had two big wins this week with Ryan Papenhuyzen and Brandon Smith now set to play in round one.
Superstar fullback Papenhuyzen finally returned to training on Wednesday almost two months after hurting his ankle at training.
Smith is also permitted to play after it was ruled he could count a representative match as his one-game ban.
Coach Craig Bellamy is looking to keep alive his remarkable record of never losing a round one match since he took over in 2003 but said his team needs to work on combinations ahead of the opener.
With Cameron Munster another missing with a one-game ban and Cooper Johns out with a shoulder injury, Bellamy still needed to settle on a five-eighth.
"Papenhuyzen hasn't trained for probably eight weeks with the team as he rolled his ankle and then there was a few issues," Bellamy told a Storm function on Wednesday night.
"But he trained with the team so he might end up playing round one."
Bellamy said Smith hadn't trained at dummy half all season as the club didn't think he would be available, while fellow rake Harry Grant is also out through suspension.
"Brandon (Smith) hasn't done any work at dummy half this pre-season as we didn't think he'd be playing round one. So we concerned ourselves with finding a different dummy half so young Tyran Wishart has been training there the whole pre-season," Bellamy said.
"With Brandon back we had a look at him at dummy half and he was quite rusty to be honest.
"We've still got a few things to work out ... we'll decide what our team is on Tuesday and it will be full steam ahead from there."
