Melbourne Storm Player Aims for State of Origin Selection While Focusing on Club Football

Making Melbourne Storm coach Craig Bellamy "happy" with pre-season effort is the first and foremost priority for Tyran Wishart, who had the carrot of possible State of Origin selection dangled by NSW coach Laurie Daley last week.

Wishart was among a raft of players called to Sydney for a meet and greet with Daley, a group which didn't include the likes of long-time Blues captain James Tedesco, as he new mentor laid out his plans to build on the success of Michael Maguire in last year's series.

Having made himself a weapon for Melbourne coming off the bench and filling in for key playmakers during their injury absences, Wishart could emulate his father, Rod, and make the leap to Origin. But still stinging from last year's limp grand final loss to Penrith, there's more immediate tasks to attend to.

"Like I think it's any kid's dream who are playing rugby league, whether you're a Queenslander or you're a New South Welshman, it's a massive honour to put those jerseys on," Wishart said on Wednesday.

"If I can get there, I'd be very stoked but at the end of the day you've got to put your focus on club footy first and that's what I'm trying to do."

Which includes the daily grind of keeping master coach Bellamy, aiming for a staggering 22nd finals campaign in his 23rd season in charge, on his good side.

"What you see is what you get with Craig and everyone rocks up day one knowing what we've got to do to, I guess, impress and make him happy and we've been doing that," he said.

"It's just big on effort and everyone, you know, this pre-season's been putting in a lot of effort, so like I said before, hopefully that can roll on to round one or firstly the trials, but yeah, leading to season and start with a bang round one."

There's extra "fuel" to create the bang too, memories of the loss to Penrith in last year's decider hanging around just enough.

"Yeah, obviously it was a, you know, the shocking way to end the season," he said.

"I think for us it's, you know, in a way it's resetting, but at the same time we don't just want to forget what we did, we want to build on what we did last year.

"I feel like we've got a pretty good squad and we're all pretty competitive and pushing each other and training so yeah we've been working hard and hopefully once we get into the games we'll see where we're at.

"I don't think we've sort of lost anyone in our 17 from last year. But I think we've sort of gained a bit of depth as well, which is really pleasing.

"That was one of our strengths last year too, so we didn't have a perfect year with injuries but whoever remained filled that hole pretty well and hopefully we can do that again."