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Melbourne Storm ... head into the World Club Challenge "half blinded" according to Matt Orford. Source: David Crosling / AAP
Former Melbourne playmaker Matt Orford admits Melbourne Storm may be walking into Saturday's (EDT) World Club Challenge (WCC) against Leeds "half blinded".
The 2008 Dally M Medallist skippered Manly to a rare WCC win in 2009, the Sea Eagles holding on to beat the Rhinos 28-20 to end England's five-year hold on the trophy.
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While Orford knows what it takes to win it, he conceded traveling to the Old Dart is a tough assignment.
"It is very hard to win," Orford told foxsports.com.au.
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"You go over there not knowing a lot about your opposition.
"It's not like over here where we dissect the teams that much that you know them inside out and you can try and stop what they are going to throw at you but you go over there sort of half blinded.
"They probably get to see all our games where we don't get to see theirs so they know how we play more than we do their game."
While Storm coach Craig Bellamy is upset that the scheduling of this year's game disrupts the Storm's NRL pre-season, the coach has vowed to pick his best possible team for the clash.
It will be the third time the two sides have done battle for the trophy, with Leeds winning the 2008 match and Melbourne going home with the title in 2010, before being stripped of the honour due to the salary cap scandal.
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Orford made his name as a halfback under the coaching of Bellamy and he believes the meticulous planning the Storm are famous for puts them in pole position to claim the match, despite the significant obstacles that need to be overcome.
"They are too experienced not to be (in perfect position to win the game)," Orford said.
"Craig (Bellamy) is at the top of the game when it comes to preparation – I don't think he'll leave any stone unturned and just be like they are in this competition with how professional they are, they'll do everything that is required of them to make sure they'll put the best blokes on the park to bring that Challenge Cup home."
Orford expects the Storm to be physically on par with Leeds thanks to a gruelling pre-season regime but adapting to the playing field and its conditions could pose problems.
"The in goals are really short so we trained with the exact field dimensions every training session so we got our kicking game right," he recalled.
"We had everything as close to their match game conditions as possible.
"Physically we were ready because we had already been training over in Australia.
"It was mostly getting used to the conditions and mentally preparing for the conditions we were going to play in.
"We played in sloppy mud and it was going to be a wet football game which was going to be a pretty boring grinding game which suited our game anyway."
The annual challenge match will be held in England for the 13th consecutive year but next year it is set to be held in Australia while in 2015 it could be enlarged to take in six teams.
Australia last hosted the challenge in 1994 when Wigan beat Brisbane at ANZ Stadium in Queensland and while the timing of the competition may still be an issue, with the NRL starting a month after Super League, Orford says hosting rights will shift the advantage back to the NRL.
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"It will change this a bit," he said of the game being played on Australian soil.
"The refereeing interpretations are different so they'll find out its quicker in England because they don't let you wrestle so when an English team gets an Australian ref it might be a bigger 10 metres than what they are used to.
"There may be a few subtle things that will shake them up a bit and put them off their game."
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