Departing Melbourne star Cooper Cronk has labelled the Storm's 2017 premiership-winning NRL team the "most complete" side of his time at the club.
Cronk has played seven grand finals in his 14 years at Melbourne for four premierships - albeit with two of them stripped for salary cap offences in 2007 and 2009.
But even considering the wealth of talent that has played at and since departed the club, Cronk said none matched the 2017 outfit in terms of their all-round make up.
"I will say this: I think it's probably the most complete team," Cronk said.
"Just in terms of a physical presence through the middle, big bodies, skill in the key positions, athleticism on the edge and very good coaching staff that prepares us within an inch of our life every time.
"So I think that might be a summary of (Sunday night)."
Melbourne's 2017 team will go close to being recognised as one of the most dominant of the NRL era.
They are the only salary-cap compliant team to have won 20 or more games in a season and gone on to win the premiership since Parramatta in 1982, while two of their four losses came during the Origin period.
At the end of a remarkable season, wingers Suliasi Vunivalu and Josh Addo-Carr combined for 46 tries - the most of any club pairing in 65 years according to Fox Sports Stats.
They also had seven players on their end-of-season roster play Origin for Queensland, while another further three represented the Kiwis this year.
Captain Cameron Smith also claimed the Dally M medal in a record-breaking year, where he also became the game's most-capped player.
Meanwhile's Sunday's 34-6 NRL grand final win over North Queensland was the biggest decider victory in the Storm's history and the biggest by any club in nine years.
"It's probably one of the tightest groups we've had at our club for a while," Smith said.
"We went through a couple of tough games in those semi-finals down in Melbourne.
"But I turned up here today extremely confident we would play well. We had done everything we could this week and I just had a feeling we would be really hard to stop."
Share
