Zac Lomax has been accused of being a lot of things in his years since bursting onto the NRL scene carrying the 'gifted one' tag bestowed on him by former Blues coach Brad Fittler.
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Freddie may still be the most 'gifted one' to ever emerge as a teenager in our game. Still, it's unlikely even he was aware of how unshakeable the label would become for Lomax, for better or worse.
Like the long-term deal he signed with the club back in 2019, it's seemingly become a heavier millstone around his neck with each passing year.
It's seen fans accuse the still-only-24-year-old of various things; of arrogance, of wasting his talent, of not caring enough. All are wide of the mark to varying degrees, the latter most of all.
Even the fact he's started this year on the wing in form strong enough to catch the eye of new NSW coach Michael Maguire is ammunition for some.
"He's finally having a crack because he wants out of the joint" or so it goes online.
True, there are players who always seem to find their best when they know they're in the shop-front window, but surely it beats the alternative of blokes kicking stones.
Some players, for whatever reason, simply can't win. It's a predicament Lomax finds himself in at present.
Speak the truth and admit publicly that he'd rather be in the centres than on the wing, and he's publicly feuding with the coach. Stay quiet and just go about his business, and the reports of discontent are seemingly confirmed, the void filled by columns like this one.
In the end Ben Hunt did that last week, inadvertently or otherwise, in confirming the 24-year-old does want to leave the club. Hunt of all people understands the pointlessness of ducks and drakes in such matters.
Now the charge is one selfishness, that Lomax won't put his ego aside and simply do what's best for the team.
That may have been true had this saga occurred one-year into that mammoth five-year deal inked in 2019.
It's far less true of the present situation, several years into the contract over which it appears no one has been asked to do 'what's best for the team' more often.
He's now playing under his fifth head coach - including two interims - in his seventh season in the top grade.
Just about every one of them has had a different view of where he should play, how he should be utilised and, more to the point, how he should handle it.
Predominantly a fullback coming through the grades as a star junior, Lomax has always expressed a desire to play there at NRL level.
He was anointed by Paul McGregor at the club's No. 1 ahead of the 2020 season, but played just the opening game there before shifting to the wing to make way for Matt Dufty.
Just as Flanagan does now, McGregor had his reasons, valid ones, and Lomax made the shift.
Most fans are familiar with the 'will-he-or-won't-he' saga that was Dufty's career at fullback for the club. He was certainly given his chances and, without possessing the versatility of Lomax, was given them in his preferred spot.
Lomax made a home at right centre and grabbed 13 tries that season. He did what was best for the team. It's something he's been asked to do countless times in the years that followed.
A lot was made of his reluctance to discuss what position he would play at the Dragons preseason open-media day this year. His potential wing shift was a new story, but for him the questions were the same as those he fielded at the corresponding time last year.
Your columnist was one of those at the time asking about the switch from the right to the left. He didn't have a whole lot to say about it, and it became apparent that was because he hadn't been told a whole lot about why he was making it.
The year prior, he'd played all 24 games at right centre, mostly in combination with Mikaele Ravalawa who had 14 tries in 14 games. Lomax had eight try assists, the bulk of them for his winger.
The optics of flick passes cannoning into the fence weren't always great, but that combination was the only consistently potent one in a miserable attacking year.
So why was Anthony Griffin moving him to the left? It was supposedly what was best for the team.
When it proved evidently not the case, Griffin punted Lomax to reserve grade in a last-ditch attempt at saving his job. Supposedly, it was what was best for the team too.
It came a time Lomax was wearing the brunt of fan frustration at the 60 per cent he was managing off the kicking tee, a new shorter one he adopted at the urging of new club goal-kicking coach Darryl Halligan.
You could reasonably argue Lomax neither wanted nor, as a near 80 per cent goal-kicker in his previous five seasons, did he need a new goal kicking coach; certainly not a new tee. Yet he did as he was told.
Following Griffin's sacking, Lomax was recalled at right centre by interim coach Ryan Carr and reverted back to the familiar higher kicking tee. He struck them back near 76 per cent for the remainder of that year while finding top form across the board.
It was a fair response to adversity for a bloke who supposedly couldn't cop it, or didn't care enough.
Now a new season has rolled around, with a new coach and new ideas that have seen him asked to embrace another shift in the best interests of the team.
It's not to say Shane Flanagan's decision is the wrong one.
The function of a new coach is to break with the past and look at things with fresh eyes, with no regard to whatever baggage a player may or may not carry from previous regimes.
Given the horrors of recent Dragons history, it's not something Flanagan can afford to give any thought or regard to. For the record, this column feels Flanagan shouldn't release Lomax from his deal either.
Even if it were part of a swap for multiple players, that's not how the NRL economy works.
A Ferrari might cost the same as three Camrys, but the value of three Camrys does not equate to that of a Ferrari, especially in a high performance environment.
Lomax is a top-shelf earner at the Dragons. Flanagan would be quite right to shop exclusively from the top shelf of rivals if they come knocking.
It's the approach Flanagan's taken to Ben Hunt's desire to depart and, given the shelf Hunt sits on is otherwise quite bare, it's hard to see it shifting.
Like with Hunt, there's also merit in the simple, yet forceful, argument that Lomax is paid good money and should play wherever the coach sees fit.
You'll get no argument here. This is rugby league, though, where arguments are often forceful, but never truly simple.
On form, Lomax may play his way into a Blues jumper on the wing and come to credit Flanagan with the rebirth of his career.
An injury could see him back in the centres or at fullback as early as this week, as Flanagan has also said.
Or, he might stay on the wing and the will-he-or-won't-he will continue all season long and reach a tipping point that de-stabilises club and player to the detriment of both.
However it falls, it would be simplistic in the extreme to simply suggest Lomax has just thrown his toys out of the cot because he doesn't like the number on his back.
History shows he has inevitably done what's best for the team, all the while copping most of the flak, internally and externally, for its failings. It shouldn't come as any surprise he's growing weary of it.
Mitch Jennings
Sports writer. Sport is my passion, rugby league my first love.
Sports writer. Sport is my passion, rugby league my first love.
