Watch every second of Super Rugby Pacific live and on demand via Stan Sport.<\/a><\/p>\nForce coach Simon Cron made the call on Thursday night after the Kangaroos and NSW State of Origin winger had only hit “80 per cent” maximum speed at training.<\/p>\n
“Sorry about that,” Cron said of the Lomax anti-climax after his side’s season-reviving 42-19 bonus-point upset win over the Reds.<\/p>\n
“Maybe a little strain … because he’s a power athlete. If we put him away down an edge, he’s going to sprint and it’s too high of a risk (so) I pulled him.”<\/p>\n
Lomax walked from his lucrative Parramatta Eels contract with the intention of joining R360, only for the rebel league to delay its first season.<\/p>\n
His subsequent bid to join the Melbourne Storm ended in an out-of-court settlement ahead of a potential NSW Supreme Court hearing last month before he signed with Rugby Australia on a two-year deal.<\/p>\n
The Force will remain in Brisbane before flying to Fiji to play the Drua in Lautoka on Saturday.<\/p>\n
Cron may not have a choice but to select Lomax, given that both starting wingers Dylan Pietsch (foot) and Darby Lancaster (ankle) failed to finish.<\/p>\n
“It’s still in play,” Cron said of Lomax’s potential debut on one of the competition’s toughest trips.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“It’d be a hell of an introduction for him. The Drua \u2026 big powerful, strong. So is he, but it’d be a baptism.”<\/p>\n
With Lomax watching on, the Force put aside a frustrating month of near misses, moving to 2-5 in a season that’s already featured four losses by 10 points or less.<\/p>\n
It was their first win in Brisbane since 2017, their second win from their last 13 games and their third from their last 25 away games.<\/p>\n
And it came without Wallabies Jeremy Williams and Carlo Tizzano, while prop Tom Robertson was concussed in the 13th minute.<\/p>\n
“It just keeps that fire going inside us,” stand-in captain Nick Champion de Crespigny said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“We’ve got that belief where we want to go.”<\/p>\n
It was the Reds’ second-straight loss – after a four-game winning streak – ahead of a tough stretch of games against the Crusaders, Blues, Brumbies and Chiefs.<\/p>\n
“We’ll come back in Monday and have a look at … what we need to get back to,” Captain Fraser McReight said.<\/p>\n
“We’ve got some tough games coming up.<\/p>\n
“There’s no lack of faith whatsoever; the squad is in a good spot and I feel we just need to restart that engine.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Zac Lomax’s latest setback has paved the way for a “hell of an introduction” in Fiji for the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":588132,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[567],"tags":[64,63,760,85,48013,11229],"class_list":{"0":"post-588131","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-rugby","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-rugby","11":"tag-sports","12":"tag-super-rugby-pacific","13":"tag-western-force"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/588131","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=588131"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/588131\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/588132"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=588131"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=588131"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=588131"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}