...has turned down a move to Paramatta according to the Sydney Morning Herald

Why should he want to play for a poor team at the bottom of the NRL when could stay here and play for.....oops

I can't see Parramatta giving up on signing him after just one offer.

If he has any ambition he will let everyone make him their best offers and make his way to the Nrl.

When is his contract up?

Would you as Saints fans be happy for him to go a year or two early if you picked up a sizeable transfer fee?

The thought of losing Roby absolutely terrifies me.

Nope I'd never be happy to see Roby leave. No matter what transfer fee we could get for him he can't be replaced.

What I meant was that if he was going to go at the end of his contract anyway, would you hold him to it or release him a year or two early for a decent fee?

Tough one. I'd probably hold him to it give us time to find a replacement we've not got a great track record with panic signing lately!

We're not going to be able to buy Smith or Farah so no point selling him, it would be far better if he saw out his contract.

Even if we got a million quid for him what would be the point? There's nobody around we could find to replace him with with that money - just the same as your lot will find when Tomkins is on his way. I'd rather we kept him for as long as humanly possible and then got newt' rather than have a big pile of cash and a weaker team for a few years.

I would rather Roby saw out his contract because there are no better options available to us at present. Roby could take Dom Speakman under his wing as a tutor like Keiron Cunningham did with Robes. It would be disastrous if we sold Roby now without a replacement lined up or someone in line at the club to take over.

I suppose the point is, if (and this is purely hypothetical) we knew he was definitely going to leave in a year's time anyway, then we'd be in a much better position to find a replacement if we sold one year early for a fee than if we held on for one last year. We're never going to get a like-for-like replacement, but we might, for example, be able to pick up someone like Daryl Clarke if we had a fee to play with, whereas if we held on for another year we'd be trawling the bargain bucket for a freebie.

As it happens, I think we're lucky in that Roby is a pretty homespun sort of guy whose first instict will be to stay with his hometown club. I may be wrong, of course, but that's the impression I get - he could quite easily have left us last time his contract was up for renewal (and wouldn't we up the creek now if he had).

It just depends on how you spend the money though.
Plough it back into youth development, sports science, scouting systems etc, buy two or more players to strengthen the squad.
We've been having this "discussion" on the Wigan site, and I'm in the get the money in and use it wisely camp. There are others who think that it's better to make the player see out his contract then leave for nothing.

Good one. No more please, chain em, take their passports from em, excommunicate them, but keep them here.