{"id":425365,"date":"2026-01-20T11:35:14","date_gmt":"2026-01-20T11:35:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/425365\/"},"modified":"2026-01-20T11:35:14","modified_gmt":"2026-01-20T11:35:14","slug":"zac-lomax-contract-stand-off-due-to-parramatta-eels-exit-clause-melbourne-storm-offer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/425365\/","title":{"rendered":"Zac Lomax contract stand-off due to Parramatta Eels exit clause, Melbourne Storm offer"},"content":{"rendered":"

The stand off between Melbourne<\/a> and Parramatta<\/a> over Zac Lomax<\/a> could be resolved by the NRL<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It has been widely reported that the Storm is willing to hand over $200,000 as a transfer fee to the Eels, but financial compensation has been rejected, with Parramatta hellbent on a player swap.<\/p>\n

A $200,000 compensation payment is considered to be a fair offer, with the Bulldogs last season paying $160,000 to Wests Tigers to get Lachlan Galvin out of his deal with the joint venture, which is the most recent comparable case..<\/p>\n

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The Eels have put Storm stars Jack Howarth, Xavier Coates and Stefano Utoikamanu at the top of their list for a player swap<\/a> but with Melbourne already losing several representative level stars in the off-season, a player swap is not considered to be the right play by last season’s losing grand finalists.<\/p>\n

A transfer fee would not help the Eels in the open market, due to the constraints of the salary cap. That money would instead need to be used in football operations.<\/p>\n

Ryan Papenhuyzen, Nelson Asofa-Solomona and Eli Katoa will not be in Storm colours for 2026 and club officials don’t want to let any more players leave.<\/p>\n

\"An<\/p>\n

Zac Lomax won’t return to the Eels.\u00a0NRL Imagery<\/p>\n

The Sydney Morning Herald reports<\/a> the NRL will intervene if the Eels are not prepared to consider any “reasonable offers” by the Storm, or any rival club in the market for the 26-year-old.<\/p>\n

Neither the Eels nor Lomax want to re-join forces, with the Eels moving on to sign Brian Kelly from the Gold Coast.<\/p>\n

Lomax reportedly wants to return to the NRL, despite claims he was considering a move to rugby.<\/p>\n

Super Rugby clubs the Western Force and ACT Brumbies were keen to sign Lomax, yet he changed his mind about a code switch after Christmas.<\/p>\n

Lomax posted a photo of himself at a Melbourne Renegades Big Bash game over the weekend.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The stand off between Melbourne and Parramatta over Zac Lomax could be resolved by the NRL. It has…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":425366,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[568],"tags":[64,63,761,762,158,85],"class_list":["post-425365","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nrl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-national-rugby-league","tag-nationalrugbyleague","tag-nrl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/425365","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=425365"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/425365\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/425366"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=425365"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=425365"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=425365"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}