Melbourne fullback Billy Slater will be a hero among his teammates for more than just his on-field exploits.

Slater was given a week's break leading into the Storm's 20-8 victory over North Queensland on Friday night and used the time to go surfing with his young family at Port Macquarie on the NSW mid-north coast.

Thanks to a dazzling performance at Olympic Park, in his 150th NRL match for Melbourne, coach Craig Bellamy is set to continue the trend, with more players rested in the run-up to the finals.

"We'll give a couple more guys this week off," Bellamy said.

"It's a situation where if we think it's going to benefit us down the track well we'll do it.

"He's already hit me up for another week off but we'll have to think about that."

Slater said he believed the rest was a benefit mentally more than physically.

"I think everyone's carrying a few little niggles at this time of the year but it's just the mental drain with the whole Origin series," Slater said of the recent months.

"It's not just this year either, we played a World Cup at the end of last year and we had about seven weeks off and we had about four weeks preparation before the trials.

"I think over the next four years we're probably going to have to do the same thing with the quad nations at the end of the year and the Origin series so it will be a pretty big workload for the representative players."

Lock Dallas Johnson reached the 150-game milestone against the Cowboys along with Slater, both debuting at the club in Bellamy's first match as head coach in 2003.

Bellamy was like a proud father talking about the duo, as well as his skipper Cameron Smith.

"It does mean something to me, we were all sort of rookies together here when we first started," Bellamy said.

"It was an adventure for them and an adventure for me in my first year as a head coach. We like to think that we've battled along there together."

"And Cameron as well they're like sons to you at some stage because we have grown up in footy life together. It was great to see Billy out there, he adds the excitement and Dallas adds the grit so it's a pretty good mix."

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