It says here that our very own Melbourne Storm is the finest expansion team of any elite club in world sport.

In 12 seasons of competition, the Storm have played in five grand finals and have won three of them.

You would be hard-pressed to find a sporting club (franchise might be the operative word given we're talking mainly about the United States) where a team created out of nothing has become so successful so quickly.

The next best might be the Florida Marlins baseball team, which joined Major League Baseball in 1993 and won the World Series in 1997 and again in 2003. The Arizona Diamondbacks, whose debut MLB season was in 1998, won its first and only World Series title in 2001.

None of the more recent additions to the National Football League have won a Super Bowl title, while the NBA's Miami Heat won the 2006 championship, 18 years after joining the league. Hardly an expansion team at all.

The Storm's efforts have been remarkable. The pillars of the 1999 team were founder and chairman John Ribot, coach Chris Anderson and skipper Glenn Lazarus. A decade on, chief executive Brian Waldron, coach Craig Bellamy and captain Cameron Smith make for an equally powerful triumvirate.

The Storm have benefitted from being out of the Sydney spotlight and a bit like Sydney and Brisbane in the AFL, have used their ‘outpost' status to their advantage. The Storm is a better run club than any other in the NRL and as we have opined before, has created a culture of excellence that has borrowed in many respects from the uber-professional world of the AFL that surrounds it.

Whether this sustained period of success will translate to a boost in support remains to be seen, although next year's move from the cramped and grimy Olympic Park to the new rectangular stadium almost completed next door will make the Storm a more attractive proposition for your average theatre-going sports fan.

Finally, any mention of the NRL Grand Final is not complete without mentioning Channel Nine's diabolical effort in cutting its coverage into Melbourne less than 60 seconds after the final siren in order to show the local news.

It was a major cock-up and Nine deserves every bit of condemnation that comes its way.