I haven't played against Melbourne for a couple of seasons now due to a variety of reasons but it's not hard to remember what happened when we faced them last season.
We were on a real roll and in the top four at the time after winning six straight games and were coming off really strong wins over the Sydney Roosters and South Sydney leading into what was billed as a big match-up at AAMI Park.
But, as is so often the case when you get ahead of yourself and are guilty of believing all the hype which was around us at the time, we went down there and got our bums kicked.
We were nowhere near as good as we thought we were. The Storm, hearing all the hype around us, were no doubt motivated to knock us down a peg or two. The 34-4 scoreline suggests they did a good job of putting us back in our box.
After that game, we had a few decent wins but it was a big reality check that we never really recovered from as our season went down the gurgler.
Now we prepare to meet them for the first time since then at Gosford on Saturday, coming off the back of a gutsy effort against the Panthers and a strong performance against the Raiders.
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We've had some good media too over the past couple of weeks and there is probably a little bit of hype building again. The difference this time though is none of the boys are buying into any of it.
We've earned absolutely nothing yet. Not a thing.
Sides like Melbourne have been consistently great for a long time now. They have built their culture and set standards that our club can only aspire to emulate. They are at a level now and have been for a number of years that we want to build towards.
You can't do that overnight. You certainly don't get there off the back of a decent start to the season and a win over the Canberra Raiders.
There were some good periods of play against the Raiders. We started really well, got out of the blocks quickly and executed really good at times but as our review on Tuesday showed, there were plenty of areas we can work on.
We failed to defend a couple of errors in that second half and leaked two quick tries which certainly got an airing during our video session. But everyone is ripping in and contributing which is good. It's been a real team effort.
Hopefully our five-eighth Kurt Mann will be right to play against Melbourne. The coaches have done a lot of work with Kurt and he's really putting in the hard yards and it's been showing in his performances alongside Pearcey.
He has a lot of people believing in him. Right across the board, the belief is good among all the boys. But we know there is a long way to go yet.
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