“I don’t mind a bit of pain every now and again as it reminds you that you’re alive,” James Roby says with a smiley little grimace on a sun-kissed winter afternoon in St Helens. The 37-year-old captain of the Super League champions will soon reflect on Saints’ remarkable victory against Penrith Panthers in Australia this month when they won the World Club Challenge. As the first British team to win the competition away from home since Wigan in 1994, St Helens have built a sustained success exemplified by Roby’s astonishing consistency after 20 years at the peak of a brutal sport.
“I’ve played it for a long, long time,” Roby says in his quietly compelling way. “As you age you get a bit stiffer and more sore in the morning. I come into training and we’ve got lots of young lads bouncing around, without a care in the world. I walk in like I’ve just been in a car crash.
