FULFILLING the predictions of doom, the Melbourne Storm demoralised the drastically understrength Bulldogs last night, racking up a 46-0 win at Olympic Park.

The Sydney outfit was always up against it after five regular first graders, including superstar Sonny Bill Williams, were forced from the line-up with injuries as their replacements had just a handful of National Rugby League games between them.

That scenario led the Storm to revive its attacking prowess after it had scored only 188 points over the previous 11 rounds.

However, Melbourne had its own injury problems with Will Chambers damaging his left knee during the final training on Friday night. The promising centre, who has impressively stepped into Matt King's left centre position this year, fell awkwardly when taking a kick towards the end of the session.

Chambers will see a specialist today and undergo surgery this week and is expected to join reserve outside backs Ben MacDougall and Dane Nielsen on the sidelines for the rest of the season.

Storm coach Craig Bellamy now faces a shortage of available outside backs but his reshuffle of the back line last night could point to his thinking. Five-eighth Greg Inglis and utility Matt Geyer, who came of the bench to start the game, rotated between pivot and Chambers' left centre position.

Yet the late change did not stop the defending premier from ruthlessly dissecting its hapless opponent as the Storm racked up six tries and 28 points in the first half.

It slowed down in the second half, with Michael Crocker's second try eight minutes after half-time, the only success for the Storm before a second try to Geyer and one to Cronk — who was in brilliant form having a hand in several others — in the final seven minutes.

The Bulldogs were competitive in the early minutes and were aided by the Storm giving away a wave of penalties. But Melbourne soon made the Bulldogs pay for its inability to take advantage when captain Cameron Smith made a smart dash from dummy half and took a couple of Bulldogs defenders over the line with him to score. His conversion of the try gave the Storm a 6-0 lead after 14 minutes.

From then, the Storm took control of the game and racked up four more tries before half-time to Geyer, Israel Folau, Steve Turner and Jeremy Smith.

Billy Slater took a neat inside pass in the 25th minute from Cronk and sliced through the defence before sending a pass — which looked forward — to Geyer for his first try of the year. Smith converted to give the Storm a 12-0 lead but that was soon extended when Dallas Johnson split the Bulldogs and passed to Crocker, who was surrounded by desperate defenders.

Despite being in doubt with a calf injury, Crocker bounced off several defenders and offloaded to Cronk who sent an around-the-corner pass to Folau. He neatly caught the ball around his boots before diving over the line. Smith missed the conversion as the Storm was up 16-0.

Melbourne extended that lead before half-time with two soft tries. Turner was the beneficiary of the first on 34 minutes when the Bulldogs failed to deal with a Cronk cross-field kick. Folau outjumped the defence to knock it back for Slater to snatch up the crumbs. He offloaded to Turner who crossed to score without being touched.

Storm lead 22-0 with the conversion before back-rower Smith forced his way over from close range on half-time.

Smith made his fourth conversion from five attempts to give the Storm its imposing 28-0 lead after the first 40 minutes.