Bellamy questions Eels gamesmanship

Craig Bellamy has questioned whether Eels winger Maika Sivo deliberately stayed down after an alleged crusher tackle from Storm rookie Cooper Johns that left the young halfback on report in his team's 14-0 loss at Bankwest Stadium on Thursday night.

The Storm coach confirmed stand-in hooker Brandon Smith has a broken jaw and faces a nervous wait for the charge sheet given Johns and Albert Vete were each placed on report for crusher tackles while Nelson Asofa-Solomona was sin-binned for a high shot.

"Whether they are [crushers] or not, you get people turning in tackles, and I think I made that comment earlier in the week," Bellamy said.

"No-one goes out there to consciously do a crusher tackle on the opposition. With all due respect there was one on one of our blokes too that didn't get picked up [Tom Eisenhuth after a possible crusher from Marata Niukore] but our bloke got up and played the ball.

"At the end of the day that's out of my jurisdiction what happens there. Whatever will be will be."

Told of Eels coach Brad Arthur's comments that his players do not deliberately stay down, Bellamy added carefully: "I disagree with Brad on that one."

Asked about Asofa-Solomona being binned for his high shot but Niukore not being sent for the high tackle that caused the injury to Smith, Bellamy added: "Inconsistency is what I would call that."

Despite being held to nil for the first time in six years, Bellamy was proud of the effort from a squad that was already without Cameron Smith, Cameron Munster, Dale Finucane, Jesse Bromwich and Suliasi Vunivalu, among others.

"I think it was only 2-0 in the second half with the players we had in, we had a debutant and a new captain so we had a bit of a disrupted week. I couldn't have asked for much more from them," he said.