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The Eels CEO then revealed the reasoning behind quickly granting Lomax his wish.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was surprised that one year into a four-year contract a player would be looking at other options,\u201d Sarantinos said.<\/p>\n
\u201cZac was upfront with the key leaders at the club about being approached and other options would be something he would consider if that transpired. He approached us to consider an early release.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe ultimately reached the view that that was what was in the best interest of the football team to not have a situation where a player on considerable money leaves part way through a season \u2026 That can leave you in a difficult position.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere was no debate, there was no dispute, there was no challenge to it at all. He agreed.\u201d<\/p>\n
Parramatta were one of the best performing sides in the back half of 2025, and even despite the Lomax circus, the Eels should enter this season full of confidence.<\/p>\n
The club were ecstatic with the Eels\u2019 late season surge after Jason Ryles endured a rocky start to his first stint as an NR: head coach.<\/p>\n
You\u2019d have to say Jason Ryles\u2019 rookie head coaching season was a success.Source: Getty Images<\/p>\n
Ryles made several tough decisions to mold the roster in the way he wanted to, which included letting skipper Clint Gutherson walk.<\/p>\n
That move raised eyebrows inside and outside the four walls of Eels HQ, but Ryles stuck to his guns, which impressed Sarantinos.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think he showed the courage and conviction to make some difficult decisions last year, even though he took some heat in the short-term,\u201d Sarantinos said.<\/p>\n
\u201cJason wanted to see how the season played out before committing to Gutherson long-term \u2026 It was too early for (Jason) to make a long-term decision on Gutho. Gutho did the right thing to explore his options.<\/p>\n
\u201cUltimately, we\u2019ve brought in Jason as a head coach, but we\u2019ve brought him in with every intention of backing his decision making and that\u2019s exactly what happened in that situation.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dylan Brown was another high-profile Eels star who has left the club since Ryles took over 15 months ago. <\/p>\n
Brown took a whopping $13 million from the Knights \u2013 a figure that Parramatta weren\u2019t willing to match.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t begrudge him, and I don\u2019t think anyone begrudges him taking the offer,\u201d the Eels CEO said.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut you can either panic and react and make a decision that might not necessarily be in the best interests of the club.<\/p>\n
\u201cFrankly, if we would have responded (to the noise), that\u2019s probably what we would have felt we were doing.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Eels boss Jim Sarantinos has publicly addressed Zac Lomax\u2019s early walkout from the club, expressing his shock at…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":418922,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[568],"tags":[64,63,94877,13774,219492,5330,220754,4556,211637,220750,761,762,158,220751,220752,65198,220756,220755,85,70942,220757,220753],"class_list":["post-418921","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nrl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-coaching-call","tag-football-team","tag-george-burgess","tag-head-coach","tag-included-letting-skipper","tag-jason-ryles","tag-jeremy-latimore","tag-nas-burgess","tag-national-rugby-league","tag-nationalrugbyleague","tag-nrl","tag-outside-back","tag-performing-sides","tag-right-thing","tag-rookie-head","tag-season-surge","tag-sports","tag-stunning-call","tag-surprising-decision","tag-tell-all-interview"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/418921","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=418921"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/418921\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/418922"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=418921"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=418921"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=418921"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}