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| - WHAT WAS CLAIMED
A Facebook page features news about Melbourne Storm players and coaches.
OUR VERDICT
False. The information is fake.
AAP FACTCHECK - Foreign-run Facebook pages are spreading disinformation about the Melbourne Storm NRL club, including false claims of player deaths and scandals.
The pages, Storm City Rugby Fans and Melbourne Purple Army, post multiple times daily and are operated by users in Vietnam and the Philippines, according to Facebook transparency data.
Their fabricated posts lure followers to external sites packed with ads and additional false content.
The NRL club told AAP FactCheck it has nothing to do with the pages and that the posts are fictional and disturbing.
One post claims a Melbourne Storm staff member died and features an image of the club's assistant coach Marc Brentnall.
"The Melbourne Storm NRL club confirmed that a member of their football operations department passed away this week after a medical emergency while traveling through Melbourne," the post reads.
Despite the post claiming the incident occurred in Melbourne, overlay text on an accompanying image claims it happened during a New York trip.
The image depicts a damaged Air Canada plane. A reverse image search reveals it shows a fatal crash at a New York airport in March in which two people died, as reported by the ABC. Brentnall was not among them.
An April 3 post claims Storm player Tui Kamikamica died following a medical emergency during a match the previous day.
However, Kamikamica suffered a stroke while at home on March 30 and underwent treatment at a Melbourne hospital, according to multiple news reports.
He was discharged days later and the club has said he is undergoing inpatient rehabilitation.
Club director Frank Ponissi has said Kamikamica is making a remarkable recovery and that "he will play again" (timestamp two minutes 32 seconds).
The club told AAP FactCheck the post about Kamikamica was particularly disturbing.
Club coach Craig Bellamy is also the subject of falsehoods on the pages.
In one post, it claims Bellamy declined to wear an LGBTQI pride-themed jacket at a club event.
A story linked in the comments claims the coach addressed the situation publicly, saying "I'm here to coach football".
This is fabricated. There is no evidence of any such incident involving Bellamy.
Bellamy was the subject of a separate post, which claims he gave a seven-year-old girl battling terminal brain cancer "her dying wish".
This story is also fake. The image of the supposed seven-year-old is actually Branson Blevins, an 11-year-old boy from Alabama.
Blevins died in 2025 following a battle with leukaemia.
AAP FactCheck has previously debunked this cut-and-paste story recycled on a similar page targeting Penrith Panthers fans.
Other posts have been generated using artificial intelligence (AI), including one about a female Storm fan that features the Gemini logo from Google's AI generator in the bottom right corner.
A separate post promoting an upcoming match between the Storm and Penrith Panthers shows a baseball pitch in the background.
AAP FactCheck has also identified similar pages targeting supporters of the South Sydney Rabbitohs, Sydney Roosters and Brisbane Broncos.
AAP FactCheck is an accredited member of the International Fact-Checking Network. To keep up with our latest fact checks, follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Threads, X, BlueSky, TikTok and YouTube.
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