I have just made a little jizzum in my pants!

brilliant news, really thought he might go to the NRL

I can totally understand why you saints would be dead chuffed by this. Personally I think he should be going to Oz to test himself in the best comp. what a waste of talent. he could have gone to the next level. Let's hope Graham has more sense.

Roby could do 4/5 years in Oz and come back and give saints another 3/4 years good service at the end.

Thanks for your concern.

Where was I?

Oh yes ...

Or he could stay at Saints for the next 4 years, become a legend, and then move to the NRL when he's in his prime and prove himself to be possibly the best hooker in the world?

Personally, I think this is massive news for the club.

Fantastic news

Some people are adaptable to moving away, some people aren't.

Robes has a young family, and from what I gather is very dedicated to his family in St Helens. Some people aren't able to leave that behind. Which is fair enough.

Maybe Robes also sees that he could do something to improve the state of British RL by being here, pushing young players like Lunt, Moore, McShane and McIllorum to challenge him on a weekly basis.

As has Been proved with Morley, Ellis and Burgess once the guys get to Oz there is still a fair bit of further development to be done, core skills and methords that a worryingly lacking in the uk coaching system. I don't think at 29 Roby would reep the benefit he would by a move now.

I would suggest that Roby would benifit more than the likes of Burgess, Graham and Ellis from a move to an NRL club. His games has some tremendous qualities, but his ability to control a game from dummy half is perhaps not as strong as a hooker of his standing should have.
This may improve dramatically under Royce (an ex hooker), but NRL coaching and susequent playing could move him into a real class of his own.

My point of view is we will never develop as a comp to the level of the nrl or be good enough to beat the kiwis or Aussies until will have our 17 to 30 best players playing in the nrl. Our own league will improve and the bar will be raised with training, skills, development. An understand of how we bring through our kids to be at that level to be stars down under. The more top quality players we produce from our kids in key areas like Cumbria, saints, Wigan, cas, Leeds, hull that are gonna be good enough for the nrl will take sl standards through the roof. Having those blokes who made it in the nrl come back into our game with the experience to pass on and bringing through the next stars. Having our top players go to the nrl won't dilute SL it will make clubs light years better at producing that caliber of player.

I'd argue we more need coaches to go down under than players for that to be acheived.

My Missus spent two years working in Vancouver on secondment when she was younger. She loved the place and the society she was in, she also says I would of loved it there due to the fantastic outdoors.

However, whilst she was there, her father was taken into hospital with an eye problem, which left him temperaly (sp) blind and worrying the doctors whether his sight would return (it did, thank heavens).

Now, rightly or wrongly, Anglea's mum only told her about the incident when her dad was out of hospital with his sight regained, with the theory that there was nothing Angela could do from t'ther side of the world, so it was best not to tell her unless something definate happened.
That incident means that Ang will never live so far away from her family that she can't jump in the car and get to them.

That said, she enjoys living an hour's drive away from them, just so they're not bothering her all the time.