Flanagan shuts down Lomax swap deal after contract release

Dragons coach Shane Flanagan has shut down a potential Zac Lomax player swap as the club comes to terms with the departure of the star centre.

The Dragons revealed on Tuesday that the 24-year-old will depart the Red V at the end of 2024 after releasing the star outside back from the final two years of his contract.

Having reached an agreement with Lomax and his management, Flanagan said he will not be entertaining a player swap deal and is focused on moving forward after ongoing 'closed door' discussions.

“There’s no player swap going on, Zac is here for the rest of the year so we’ll just move on,” Flanagan told media on Thursday.

“I don’t know where all that chat has come from. We’ll just move and hopefully this is the last time we speak about it.

“Zac’s requested a release and it’s been granted so that decision’s been made from the club for the long-term.

“There’s been a lot of conversations that have happened behind closed doors and we’ll leave them that way."

Lomax has previously expressed his frustration with a decision to move him to an edge and despite already topping his highest average run metres in a season in the past four rounds, remained discontent with a possible future as an NRL winger.

“We can’t have people that don’t want to be here. That’s the main point,” Flanagan said.

“We’ve worked hard to turn him around but it just hasn’t happened so we’ve got to move forward.

“He’s a good kid, we’ve had a lot of good conversations around it and as you can see with his football, he’s happy to be here and he’s putting his effort in so that’s all we can ask.

“Zac’s made a decision that he wants to leave the club and the club’s made a decision to let him go off his last two years.”

The premiership-winning coach said the club is committed to looking in-house to replace the Australian PM’s XIII representative before exploring the open market.

“It’s an interesting one, you lose a quality player and that frees up some money but that’s the next challenge. But we’ve got the rest of this year and moving into next year to find a replacement,” he said.

“But at least we know where we’re going and Zac knows potentially where he’s going. So that just frees us up both up moving forward.

“We’ve got some good young kids coming through in our reserve grand and our SG Ball side.

“Our juniors is something we’ve invested a lot of money in and we’ll look there before we look anywhere else.”

The news comes as the Dragons look to back-up last week’s upset victory over Manly when they head to Newcastle to meet with the Knights on Friday.

 “They’re a bit like us, a bit inconsistent and have played some good football in patches, there’s been some games where they’ve hung in there like against the Cowboys,” he said.

“So they’re very similar to us and I’m sure they’ll be up and ready to go at home, which is a big difference for them.”