A court order confirmed on Tuesday morning prohibits Zac Lomax from entering into a contract, working, training, or playing with any NRL club until 31 October 2027 without the Eels' written consent.
Crucially, Parramatta haven't slammed the door and are willing to work with Lomax and his agent to find an NRL club that wants to sign him in exchange for "appropriate value" for their football program.
Parramatta set a dangerously high standard for letting Lomax go to another club, with Melbourne proposing multiple deals, including two final proposals.
One being a $750,000 transfer fee to bring Lomax to the club, and the second seeing the Storm agreeing to sign Ryan Matterson, paying out the remainder of his $416,000 contract and $300,000 in cash.
Matterson was set to be contracted this year with 2027 being an option controlled by the team if he was to head to the Storm.
The Eels forward rejected the move, as he wanted the second year of his deal with Melbourne guaranteed instead of an option per all reports.
There are two tools a club can use to compensate another in a swap or transfer:
Cash sits entirely off the salary cap.
It goes directly into the receiving club's football department budget: things like for recruitment, retention, staff etc.
It frees equivalent space on the receiving club's book without the acquiring club necessarily paying wages to any specific player.
Player swaps are the third option, and the most complex.
Any play offered a compensation must be a genuine football asset, not a salary dump the acquiring club is trying to offload.
Both the NRL and the receiving club can reject a player swap on those ground.
The player himself must agree to the move, and no player can be traded without their consent under the standard NRL player contract.
With these tools in hand, here are five clubs that could realistically put together a package Parramatta could accept.
1. Cronulla Sharks: Jesse Ramien or Michael Gabrael
The Sharks have two players who could work here, but they represent fundamentally different kind of transactions, and Parramatta would approach them very differently.
Jesse Ramien is contracted until the end of the 2026 season at around $500,000 per season, and has not been offered or signed a new deal, but has rather already been given permission to negotiate with rival clubs.
The Sharks are facing a cap crunch with a wave of experienced players coming off-contract at season's end.
For Parramatta, a 28-year-old centre with 170 NRL games of experience would give the Eels an established, durable centre in a maturing retooling period for the club.
His value at $500,000 represents real compensation, meeting the floor, with the Sharks adding a cash component of $100k to tip it over.
Ramien is at the tail-end of his contract and with the Sharks trying to move off him, he could represent a genuine asset that would help the Eels continue trying to be competitive. The Eels wouldn't have to do a long-term deal with the Sharks centre, most likely a two-three year deal at most, given his age and competitive window to build around Mitch Moses.
Michael Gabrael is a 21-year-old centre signed until the end of the 2027 season.
An Eels junior who arrived at the Sharks as the player swapped for Connor Tracey after the 2023 season, and has impressed his coaching staff with blinding speed and prolific try-scoring, posting 19 tries in 20 games in 2025 for the Newtown Jets in the NSW Cup.
For the Eels, Gabrael is exactly the profile that fits the youth timeline the club has leaned on, and with his contract value at a lower number, somewhere around $350,000 to $400,000 per season.
That would mean the Sharks would need to pad the deal significantly with cash, approximately $250,000.
The upside in Gabrael could make this the most forward-looking deal on this entire list.
