After 12 months of micro-aggressive excuses, Zac Lomax has finally overcome his prejudice towards one of society’s most marginalised groups.
Wingers were long the laughing stock of rugby league, a demographic hit with decades of vile slurs like “failed touch judges”, “groupies” and “not real footballers”.
Once saved for bantamweight reserve-graders or the coach’s son, the winger’s jersey was the most avoided in rugby league, kinda like the Kangaroos jersey is today.
Thankfully, recent years have seen rugby league kick its archaic views in to touch, with the game accepting wingers as regular people thanks to changing community attitudes and the compelling works of Brian To’o’s thighs.
However, this gross undercurrent of discrimination resurfaced last season when Lomax became the poster boy for anti-inclusive Wingophobia.
Despite producing career-best footy after being remodeled as a blockbusting flanker, Lomax’s constant assertions he was a specialist centre laid bare a deep antagonism for his beleaguered new role.
Even though he’d been transformed from a frustrated footballer to an all-action rep-standard tackle-buster who’d soar above opponents to catch bombs in one hand while the other was “shakkaz-up”, Lomax was still spewin’.
In fact, every eye-catching performance only served to strengthen his resolve that playing on the wing was still ultra lame.
In the end, the Temora native was so repulsed by Shane Flanagan’s insistence he continue in his best position that he strove the most extreme of lengths to disassociate from its shame.
Not only did Lomax take a pay cut to return to the centres – a position where he’d previously excelled but only as an unfulfilled talent – but also more damning, he did so for Parramatta.
And when the 25 year old happily fled his breakout environment to join a club with its own phobias rooted in the 1980s, it only proved one thing:
The game of rugby league still had a long way to go.
Zac Lomax. (Photo by Cameron Spencer/Getty Images)
But in a win for equality and peer pressure, the Dragons defector has now shaken off his biased profiling and seen the light.
After playing his first game on the wing for the Eels on Saturday, Lomax conceded to Triple M that he was now happy in the position because “whether I need to play there or play front row I don’t care” provided “we’re getting the two points.”
Sure, Lomax’s statement was not an emphatic denouncement of his previous attitude, and to be fair, he was in an emotional state of delusion as he came to terms with the implausibility of Parramatta winning.
But his admission was not only a long-awaited win for the wingers’ union, it’s now also on the public record and will be legally held against him by Jason Ryles in all selection discussions forthwith.
So let it be known that Lomax is now happy to be a winger, and all it took was three Origin jerseys, two Kangaroo caps, one elevation to the Dally M Team of the Year and a heroic golden point field goal kicked with a broken foot.
Most importantly, let’s hope his epiphany buries the old stereotypes about wingers and how they’re all rejects.
Sure, we can’t change our history.
Sadly, there will always be a time when a winger’s physical profile was such they were easily confused for linesmen, or if their jersey was oversized and it was windy enough, even the linesman’s flag.
And yes, we’ll never escape a past when the centre position enjoyed disproportionate privilege over the wing simply because they looked like a tomahawk steak next to tofu.
But you can take it as gospel:
The Lomax admission is the final nail in the coffin for the days when you’d only play wing to move to the centre.
If you weren’t aware, the wing was nothing more than a boarding gate that took you one spot inside to centre, then from centre to five-eighth and then five-eighth to rep honours and/or the plastic surgeon.
But the paradigm has shifted.
Nowadays wingers are uber-valuable commodities who finish from 40 metres and eat yards like a quad bike, whereas centres are just pimped-out back-rowers with fewer DMs and Supercoach points.
In summary, if you still believe wingers belong nowhere near the middle of the ruck, nor on a football field, let Lomax show there’s hope you can be de-radicalised.
