No guarantees: Josh Dugan expects to play centre at the Sharks. Credit:Getty Images Enter Shane Flanagan and the Cronulla Sharks. Having been left frustrated by the Dragons' inability to budge on their attempt to pigeonhole him as a centre, the Sharks circled with a different method of negotiation. While it's likely he ends up playing in the same position he refused to do so at the Dragons, he insists there was a level of disrespect shown by the joint venture. "Yeah, pretty much," Dugan said when asked if he just wanted respect from the Dragons.

"That's what I tried to say a while ago. The way it panned out, the talk was fullback money or centre money. It was never about that. It was about getting what I thought I was worth as a rep player and being able to play a couple of positions and going from there. "That's what Flanno's told me. He said, 'look, I'm not going to guarantee you anything but we've bought you as an elite player'. I'm happy with that." With Valentine Holmes likely to be Cronulla's long-term fullback, Dugan isn't naive to think he will walk straight into the No.1 jersey when he joins the Sharks next year. "There are no [guarantees], but in saying that if I signed at the Dragons I would have been guaranteed centre," he said. "I don't really know how to word it, but I'm going there as a world-class player – that's what Flanno told me. That's all I wanted from the start [from the Dragons]. To be branded as that rather than a certain position. I put myself as a fullback because that's what I was playing in, but they were trying to tell me I was a centre. They tagged me as a centre straight away but I said, 'look, I'm playing fullback, I feel like I'm a fullback'.