MELBOURNE Storm coach Craig Bellamy has no illusions about the size of the challenge facing him, as he works to rebuild his team into a force again next season. Having lost a number of outright stars, such as Michael Crocker, Jeremy Smith, and Matt Geyer, there is also possibly the hardest presence to replace, giant centre Israel Folau.

But Bellamy, who was last month reappointed as NSW state of origin coach, yesterday said he was confident he had worked out a way to keep representative commitments from interfering with his main goal of guiding the Storm to a second premiership in four seasons.

Bellamy, who conceded his players may be mentally scarred after the team had its second demoralising grand final loss in three seasons, said he was convinced to stay on as NSW coach when he was offered a number of options to reduce his origin commitments.

"It's something I really want to do to, coach NSW again," said Bellamy, who led the Blues to a series defeat this year. "I really enjoyed the involvement with the players and I'm really looking forward to hopefully going one better (next) year."

The Storm lost three games last season when it was without up to 10 players who were at origin camps. That forced it into a three-way race for its third consecutive minor premiership, which it only achieved with a big last-round win over South Sydney.

Bellamy, regarded as the game's premier coach but with Storm suffering a 40-0 humiliation at the hands of Manly in the National Rugby League grand final, said it would have been hard to have walked away from origin after a series defeat on his first attempt.

"I don't think anyone would like to walk away with a loss but at the end of the day you had to weigh up whether it was going to affect Melbourne too much and there were some concerns after (last) origin series that I had to think pretty deeply about," he said. "But everything's on course now."

Yesterday marked Bellamy's first official day at pre-season training, following a fact-finding trip to the US and a holiday in Thailand. He said the period before Christmas, when many of the team's stars were on leave or recovering from surgery, would give him a good chance to have a close look at the new talent recruited, as well as the younger players in the Storm system.

He had plenty of food for thought about how to fit new players into the holes left by those who had departed — including the near irreplaceable talents of Folau.