THE sight of four Storm players walking the streets of Coogee at 1am, eating chocolate coated ice creams, was at odds with the venom and fury of a press conference three hours earlier where the club's hierarchy vented their pent-up frustration at the NRL and the media.

Innocence co-existing with anger is merely one of the bizarre contradictions we confront in a code in which News Ltd, the owner of the Storm, must now pay a $50,000 fine to the NRL, which is half-owned by News.

In other words, News pays half the fine to the ARL, its long-term enemy.

Melbourne players Israel Folau, Adam Blair, Jeff Lima and Jeremy Smith, still excited following the Storm's comprehensive victory over the Sharks on Friday night, set off for a stroll along the beach, eating ice creams, while the club administration bunkered down at the team hotel, poring over what it perceives to be the self-serving cartels of influence that delivered the head of their captain, Cam Smith, to the NRL judiciary.

Setting a good example off the field, yet being punished on it, is at the heart of the Storm's grief. When was the last time a Storm player engaged in sex in a nightclub toilet, urinated on a pub patron, or fled to France to play rugby union, they ask, while Smith misses the grand final for an offence committed 10 times each weekend?

The Storm players and coaching staff have been on a voluntary alcohol ban for over a month.

"The boys were eating ice cream because they forgot to bring the kava up to Sydney," assistant coach Michael Maguire said of the club's Polynesian contingent and their love of the non-alcoholic drink.

Maguire, sitting with head coach Craig Bellamy and trainer Alex Corvo in a Richmond hotel on Saturday night watching a feed of the Sea Eagles-Warriors game via Darwin TV, admitted the alcohol ban wasn't motivated by a desire to show the NRL what lovely role models they are.

"Take the last 40 seconds against the Broncos, when we scored a try," he said, sipping lemon squash. "The 12 hours the Brisbane players had on the grog the week before must have had some impact at the end of the match."

The image of Storm players sitting at home on Saturday night, drinking kava or warm milk and eating arrowroot biscuits while watching Mormon TV, doesn't fit their reputation, yet the truth is the Storm would still have their captain if they hadn't tried to accommodate the NRL.

When three NRL players, including Smith, were charged after round one, the Storm knew it was a response to the promised crackdown on grapple tackles.

Bellamy did not believe Smith was guilty of a classic grapple tackle but assumed the judiciary would not be sympathetic, given the publicity over wrestling holds.

Storm founder John Ribot warned Bellamy the 83-point penalty Smith would incur for an uncontested charge could come back to bite him, but the coach and captain were keen to go along with the NRL's campaign.

As it transpired, one Wests Tigers player challenged the charge and was successful, while the Storm lost the round-two match (versus Cronulla) with Smith in the team.

That round-one "grapple tackle" became very significant when the question was raised at last week's judiciary how it compared with the one on the Broncos' Sam Thaiday that saw Smith suspended for two matches.

Told that the Thaiday head screw was many degrees worse than the round-one tackle, the judiciary had little alternative.

After all, if Smith had pleaded guilty to an innocuous tackle, how could he plead innocent to one far more severe?

The Storm's problem is not with the judiciary but the match review committee that cited him, together with a touch of self-admonishment for being so accommodating in March.

Their siege mentality served them well against the Sharks and the drama of the week appeared to take its toll more on Cronulla coach Ricky Stuart than on Bellamy. They exchanged no more than a perfunctory handshake after the match.

So now we have a repeat of last year's grand final, rather than the 1973 violence of Manly versus Cronulla, the all-Sydney game that Melbourne believe the NRL wanted.

The only good hearts in Sydney, according to the Storm, are chocolate coated.