Melbourne Storm not concerned about Cameron Smith's absence from launch Molly Meldrum with Cooper Cronk and Billy Slater at the Melbourne Storm launch. Picture: Carmelo Bazzano Source: Herald Sun MELBOURNE Storm captain Cameron Smith was a notable absentee form the NRL premier's season launch today. But the skipper isn't in doubt for Sunday's season opener against St George Illawarra. Club officials said Smith was dealing with a private matter and unable to accept his jersey with teammates but were adamant it wouldn't affect his ability to play. Star Storm fullback Billy Slater was there and said no one at the club was even contemplating thoughts of winning back to back premierships. Having lost five members of last year's premiership team Slater said the new group of players was embarking on a new journey and there was plenty of work to be done. Laurie Daley previews the round one Storm v Dragons clash. It's a tough challenge, no-one has been able to achieve that for a long time. But it's down the track," Slater said. A lot of things have to go your way to win a premiership. There's a lot of guys in this squad who weren't hear last year ... that probably makes it a little bit tougher. But we are just concentrating on getting our season off to a good start and building from there. Looking at back to back or even the premiership is so far away it's too hard to concentrate on. Storm has welcomed, again, a raft of fringe players from other teams like Junior Moors and Junior Sa'u, welcomed back Lagi Setu to the NRL from his Mormon mission and introduced a pack of youngsters to its squad. Heat may force Storm to rest players in Round 2 And Slater wasn't prepared to say whether the new group could surpass last year's efforts. I don't know whether we are better or not. It's pretty tough to go better than a premiership-winning squad," he said. We have a lot of work to do but guys like Matt Duffie and Gareth Widdop and Jesse Bromwich, they are going to take the next step in their careers. And young guys like Tohu Harris are exciting. Hopefully they can feed off the likes of Jesse and go to the next level. With just one game of the new season completed Slater said it was too hard to assess just who might be the team to beat in 2013 "I haven;"t seen anyone else," he said. You really have to wait until round three or four to assess the form and know who might be contenders.