No club likes to lose a player of the calibre of Zac Lomax but the disgruntled star’s exit could ultimately be a huge blessing for new Dragons coach Shane Flanagan as he attempts to reconfigure a roster that has underperformed for at least half a decade.

Flanagan has typically built his teams around a tough, uncompromising forward pack and a mongrel mentality.

The foundation for Cronulla’s drought-breaking premiership in 2016 was a no nonsense pack led by Paul Gallen and Andrew Fifita through the middle, with Luke Lewis and Wade Graham on the edges.

The Dragons pack inherited by Flanagan lacked class and he has already focused his recruitment on bolstering it through the pricey purchase of Luciano Leilua as well as the return of Hame Sele and the savvy pick up of former Bulldogs skipper Raymond Faitaler-Mariner.

Already the Dragons are reaping the benefits of those additions but there is still clearly an appetite to add a game changer in the front row, underlined by Flanagan’s off-season pursuit of Warriors superstar Addin Fonua-Blake, who ultimately spurned his advances to sign with next door neighbours the Sharks on a deal worth north of $1 million-a-season.

The next target in a similar bracket, according to the whispers, is Storm enforcer Nelson Asofa-Solomona, who was in February rated the 34th best player in the competition by 10 judges, including rugby league greats Andrew Johns, Darren Lockyer, Allana Ferguson and Brad Fittler, who put together a top 50 players list for Wide World of Sports and The Sydney Morning Herald.

This Sunday he will start for the North Sydney Bears in the NSW Cup despite the fact that the Storm seemingly lack firepower in the front-row and the quick play the balls he provides are loaded dynamite for the running game of Harry Grant out of dummy half.

According to the whispers, however, Asofa-Solomona reported for pre-season training overweight after Storm coach Craig Bellamy had specifically asked him to shed some kilos in his summer.

Writing about the 130kg behemoth for Wide World of Sports and the SMH when he was listed at 34 in the top 50 was Roy Masters, a statesman of rugby league who has coached at the top level and become one of the NRL’s most highly respected scribes.

Masters is based in Melbourne and is well connected with the Storm. He wrote: “Nelson’s problem is fitness. Coach Bellamy won’t want him blowing up after 15 minutes. Nor will he want him blowing up in the other sense: losing his temper and conceding penalties”.

It hinted at the seeds of discontent growing in Melbourne, which may gift wrap the hulking forward to the Dragons – one of the few clubs with the wiggle room in their salary cap to accommodate his $850,000-a-season salary – at the end of this season if not sooner.

On the flipside, the Storm’s biggest issue is its forward pack and there’s no way Bellamy and head of football Frank Ponissi will allow big Nelson to walk without at least one top-class replacement. Needless to say it’s a ‘watch this space’ kind of scenario and doubtless Flanagan will be doing all he can to engineer the recruiting coup for the Red V.

The backline, which is weakened by Lomax’s departure, is an easier fix.

Already the Dragons have made it clear they are interested in prising Panthers rising star Sunia Turuva away from the three-time reigning premiers and they’ll certainly be able to accommodate a pay rise.

The Panthers have built their success on a disciplined approach to retention and recruitment, putting a reasonable ceiling on the price tag of individuals, then trusting that their players will stay for the chance to keep winning rather than the extra dollars that are offered elsewhere.

Penrith won’t be prepared to move far north of their $350,000-a-season valuation of Turuva. The Dragons may only need to go to $450k, still a handsome salary for a winger, to get their man, giving them what would effectively be a like-for-like replacement for Lomax while making a $350,000-a-season saving.

A more speculative link has been made to Wallabies star Jordan Petaia. Petaia, now 24, has been a Wallaby since he was 19 and is one of the truly blue chip stars Australian rugby hopes to build their home World Cup campaign in 2027 around. So the Dragons will have to dig considerably deeper in the coffers to lure Petaia than they would for Turuva.

They would also likely need to offer him the fullback role, or at very least make him one of the NRL’s highest paid centres. With the Dragons already in talks to extend the deal of highly rated 21-year-old Tyrell Sloan, it is doubtful that investing a big chunk of change on chasing Petaia would be a wise investment.

The counter to that could be the view that Jack Bird, who has been switched from the back row to centre this season, is in decline. Still just 29, Bird has had a horror run of injuries over the last five years and has a lot of work to do to rediscover the form that made him an important piece of Cronulla’s 2016 premiership winning backline before moving to the Broncos on a cursed million-dollar deal.

Bird is on a deal worth about $600,000-a-season and is out of contract at the end of the season, although there is a mutual option still to be triggered for 2025. Bird, a Flanagan favourite, could yet be the next domino to fall in the Dragons rebuild, such is the ruthless nature of the business, although Petaia remains a long shot to trade Wallaby gold for the Red V.

Elsewhere in the jigsaw, captain Ben Hunt has started the season superbly but even a miraculous rehabilitation of his relationship with the Dragons is unlikely to lead to an extension to his deal that expires next season.

Flanagan will have one eye trained on his next halves combination, with the biggest splurge from his war chest likely to be saved for a play at a gun half capable of delivering behind the elite forward pack the coach is trying to build.