"IT'S Cooper's team now," Storm captain Cam Smith told coach Craig Bellamy in one of those introspective moments of honesty and humility that define the soul of the club.

It wasn't as if Smith was handing the keys of the kingdom to halfback Cooper Cronk following his two-game suspension, a banishment that means rugby league's best forward will miss tomorrow's grand final. The remark was made three weeks ago following a brutally frank review of the minor premiers' loss to the No.8-ranked Warriors.

A Storm debrief is an enlightening exercise, a cross between a religious revival meeting and a war-room conference. A senior player leads the discussion, demanding an explanation for an error, or failure to take a certain option, while nominating positives missed by the coaching staff. As Cronk says, "They are always honest, forthright and sometimes confronting."

Following the Warriors match review, Bellamy and Smith spoke of the hooker's own involvement, and it was then that the "Cooper's team" comment was made.

"This isn't an ego thing?" Bellamy asked, knowing Smith's ego is so small you couldn't find it with a magnifying glass. No, Smith was speaking reality. He was conceding he had allowed himself to become less involved in the play as Cronk assumed more of the decision making.

As Bellamy says: "The last 18 months Cooper has been more central to our attack. When [Matt] Orford left [for Manly, the Storm's grand final opponents], we had to get Cooper to blend into the team. In those early stages, Cam was the linchpin but as time went on Cooper was doing better than we thought and we changed things around."

Following the chat with Smith after the Warriors match, Bellamy assigned him some additional dummy-half responsibilities. The Broncos match was possibly his best since the State of Origin series, a period during which he still polled almost enough votes to win successive Dally M medals.

"After the Warriors game we had a heart-to-heart," Bellamy said. "There were parts of the game we planned but parts of the game where things happened we didn't plan. Perhaps Cam stood back and let it happen too much. Because we were winning games, we didn't notice he was taking a bit of a back seat.

"Perhaps it was complacency by him and by me. He was playing steady but not playing as well as he could. He came up with the point that our game had changed with Cooper. He was the one who identified it. We wanted him to step forward. It was a lesson for all of us."

Smith was a picture of head-down intensity before the Broncos game and unalloyed joy afterwards, unaware of the grapple-tackle furore until he returned to the dressing room after the press conference and said, "What was that all about?"

Then came the suspension, and a player who had suddenly reignited his season was snuffed out, all of which partly explained why Bellamy - a man who empathises with his players - unloaded so furiously on the NRL and the media. He was shattered for Smith. Bellamy's subsequent refusal to accede to the NRL and issue a public apology is consistent with that solidarity with his players.

With Smith gone, the coach has become Sean Connery in the film Finding Forrester, saying to Cronk, "You're the man now, Dog!" Except that Cronk, according to Smith's perception, had been "Dog" for some time.

Not according to Bellamy, if you base it on a comment he made after the loss to Leeds in the World Club Challenge match in February. "If Smith plays, we win," he whispered in the dressing room of his skipper, who had remained in Melbourne for the birth of his first child. Cronk was the leader that night, and the game broke down in the halves.

But a football season is an eight-month long battle between the forces that hold a team together and those who seek to pull it apart. Cronk may not be tall but all the perpendicular adjectives apply - up-front, straightforward, upstanding, upright.

He is a hard self-marker. During the Warriors debrief, he volunteered how a high kick he made late in the match led to the Warriors' winning try. He should have kicked for the sideline, set a scrum, watched the clock tick down and defended against an attack set deep in its own quarter.

"It was the wrong judgment," he says. "I admitted it and apologised for it. I did it once before in a tight game, and Craig mentioned it, and as soon as I kicked the ball, I could have kicked myself in the head.

"If I hadn't brought it up, someone else would have. If you see a player doing something and it's not within the walls of the team structure, you have to bring it up. You don't want to ignore something and have regrets later."

Cronk's arrival as the Storm's decision-maker is not, therefore, a lesson in spontaneous combustion. Yet he stunned veteran observers with his leadership against the Sharks, possibly surprising his own coaching staff.

Greatness doesn't always arrive with a flourish. Sometimes, it grows quietly, revealing itself gradually to even those with the best view. Ask Cronk about leadership and he chimes the Three Musketeers refrain … but he actually means it.

"At the end of the day, it's about the team aspect," he says. "I'm just the half. If I have to say something on the field, I do. The role of the half as the little angry one who says things hasn't changed."

Told of Cam Smith's perception of the subtle power shift, Cronk is very definite.

"Cam is very central to what we do," he says. "He is the captain. "My role has been highlighted now more for the off-field responsibilities but, from inside, my job hasn't changed. I've still got to control the game and read its tempo. Once I start worrying what Billy Slater is doing, or what the front-rowers are up to, or what someone on the bench might to, my own game will fall apart."

From the fierce to the focused, the common trait among the game's great leaders is an ability to concentrate on the game and not on the implications of the game.

With Cronk in charge, the Storm have a clear head, one who is able to focus on the details of the night and not on the headlines the next morning.