Shane Flanagan has emphatically denied the Dragons are entertaining a player swap for Zac Lomax while also declaring Ben Hunt’s release request last season is “completely different” to the 24-year-old’s current situation.
Flanagan spoke in depth about Lomax after confirmation earlier in the week that had been granted a release from the final two years of his contract, with the Parramatta Eels looming as the leading contender for his signature.
It comes after Roosters coach Trent Robinson also told reporters on Thursday morning that the club had no interest in Lomax despite Joseph Manu and Joseph Suaali’i’s impending exits.
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“We’ve got the centres that we want,” Robinson said.
“We still need to add a couple of outside backs but not in that price change. We’re not (going after Lomax).”
Even if Parramatta is in the box seat to land Lomax, it won’t come before next year according to Flanagan, who was not sure where the talk of a potential player swap had come from when pressed on the matter by reporters.
“There is no player swap going on,” Flanagan said.
“Zac is here for the rest of the year, I don’t know where all of that has come from. We’ll just move on… and hopefully this is the last time we speak about it.
“This is not news. I know you’ve all got jobs to do. This has been going on for weeks and weeks and weeks and all the people I talk to are deadset sick of it — and so am I.”
Flanagan was also not having any suggestions of double standards in the Dragons’ treatment of Lomax’s request and that of skipper Hunt, who in June last year made clear he wanted out of the club.
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“It’s completely different,” the Dragons coach said.
“Ben’s got nothing to do with Zac Lomax. Ben wants to be here. Ben will see out his contract and maybe go further. Don’t confuse the issue with Ben and Zac.
“They are two completely different issues.”
When pushed on why the Dragons had granted Lomax’s release request, Flanagan had a simple response.
“We can’t have people who don’t want to be here,” he said.
“That’s the main point. We’ve worked hard to turn him around, but it just hasn’t happened.
“We’ve got to move forward.”
Flanagan though dismissed any talk that there had been “arguments” between the pair, telling reporters “there has been none of that”.
“We’ve had a lot of good conversations around it. As you can see with his football, he’s happy to be here and he’s putting the effort in. That’s all we can ask,” Flanagan added.
“Zac has made a decision that he wants to leave the club. The club has made a decision to let him go from the last two years. There’s a lot of conversations behind closed doors and we’ll keep them that way. It’s not the first time this has happened and it’s not going to be the last.”
Attention now turns to who the Dragons could target without Lomax and his $800,000-a-year contract on their books, having already been linked to Panthers winger Sunia Turuva and Storm forward Nelson Asofa-Solomona.
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Flanagan said the club will look internally first and did not want to comment at depth on either Turuva or Asofa-Solomona, instead saying that granting Lomax’s release request gives both parties much-needed clarity moving forward.
“It’s an interesting one,” Flanagan said.
“You lose a quality player and it frees up some money. We’ve got to fill our roster and that’s our next challenge. We’ve got the rest of this year and moving into next year to find a replacement. But at least we know where we’re going.
“It frees us both up to move forward. Quality players are definitely on our radar. We haven’t identified one particular player as of yet. It [the release] has all just happened in the last week or two. We’ll assess the market and once again make a good decision for the club moving forward.
“We get linked with everyone at the moment. As I said, we’ll assess any players that come on the market. Nelson’s under contract. If all of a sudden he does become available, we’ll assess it.”
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