So they should be. Melbourne have been an absolute blight on rugby league. They ruined several years of the competition with their deliberate salary cap cheating of unprecedented magnitude, were never properly punished for it, and ushered in an era of deliberate cheating on the field along with tackles designed to injure other players and completely control the ruck. Any time a rule was brought in, they either found a technical loophole, another way around it, or just flat out ignored it knowing the referees would buckle first. Cameron Smith may be a great player but he's an absolute grub on the field, Craig Bellamy has shown that while he may be an excellent coach he's never been able to win a premiership without having three future immortals in his spine. Alex McKinnon may well never walk again because Bellyache thinks winning dirty is far more important than abiding by the rules of the game. And to top it off they've produced maybe one local junior. As a code we would have been better off booting the Storm from the comp in 2011.
And gratitude for their sacrifice? Half their players are from Queensland anyway. They should be grateful to us for even letting them in. If I was a player there and had a choice between a frozen shithole full of smarmy wankers and coronavirus or living somewhere half decent I'd be hoping for the team to be moved up north every year.