FORMER St Helens captain James Roby has been appointed the club’s Leadership, Culture, & Performance Coach and has flown out to Cyprus with the players and the other members of the club’s coaching staff for its pre-season training camp.
The new role is a wide-ranging one. He will continue to be closely linked with the first-team playing squad in a coaching capacity, but he will also have a role in several other aspects of the club’s operations.
Roby is delighted to be staying with the club he has graced over the last 20 years, having played a record number of 551 matches.
“St Helens is home for me and I’ve had a very lucky 20-year career,” said Roby.
“But coming to the end of it is a little scary at times. You think about what’s next and what to go into and I explored a lot of different possibilities and opportunities. But in the end, this role became available. It gave me the chance to stay in the environment that I know. I’m very familiar with all the staff and all the players, so it’s a very easy transition for me as a retiring player.
“It’s a role that I’m really passionate about. I really want to add value and make a positive difference. Just like I was as a player, I’m ambitious to succeed in this new role.
“But first and foremost I’m another coach around the place to help with Paul Wellens, Laurent Frayssinous, Matty Smith, and the other coaching staff.
“I’ll be taking the lead on the things we do as a team that deal with our values, our culture, and the leadership aspect of that.
“I’ll be mentoring some of the players from a performance mindset, I’ll be doing individual one-on-one coaching where we will focus on people as an individual, trying to just squeeze a little bit more out of them if we can by a different approach.
“I’m very open to learning. I know that I’ve got a lot of upskilling to do and things that I’ll learn on the go or on the job, but I’m welcoming that challenge and embracing it. The challenge of working with these professional athletes day in and day out, trying to squeeze a little bit more out of them, that extra percent, it really excites me.
“We’ve got a very strong and stable culture that has been developed over many, many years and if you look at our trophy cabinet, this club is built on success. It’s built on hard work, and honesty. There are a lot of attributes that go into it and good people make good cultures. Part of my job will be to maintain that.”
After his playing career ended, Roby had a date with a surgeon to cure a longstanding problem that had affected the latter part of his career.
“Since the end of the season I’ve had a hip re-surfacing operation, which was always the plan for when I finished,” he said.
“Realistically, I had needed it for more than five years.
“I could get through the games okay; most rugby lads are used to playing through pain. But it was only last year when I realised it was getting too much. The pain was excruciating at times. I knew that even if I had wanted to carry on, I couldn’t have done so without having that operation.
“So now I’m hopefully on the road to recovery and I start my new role at St Helens.”
