SINNER TO A SAINT
JAMES Roberts was a troubled teenager who Penrith sacked after he failed to curb his off-field behaviour.
But the former Titan and now NSW centre yesterday heaped praise on Phil Gould, the Panthers’ general manager of football, for driving him to mature from a talent who was unhinged by booze into a State of Origin player.
While it was Gould who terminated his Panthers contract – after South Sydney had already sacked him – Roberts revealed the Penrith supremo’s duty of care never ended, as he kept in touch and continually offered guidance.
Gould last night lauded Roberts’s remarkable turnaround as a “wonderful story” for a blossoming career that has appeared doomed on several occasions.
“James came to Panthers at a very important time in his life,” Gould said of Roberts’s arrival in 2013.
“It’s yet another example of how a sport like rugby league can help a troubled teenage individual like James grow and mature into the quality young man you see today.”
Roberts has had the help of two of rugby league’s great mentors in Gould and Brisbane coach Wayne Bennett.
“A lot of people have helped James along the way,” Gould said.
“More importantly, James eventually learned that he too had to play an active part in his own development.
“He is playing with a great club at the Broncos. He is settled with a family of his own. He is about to become a NSW Blue. It’s a wonderful story.”
Gould sacked Roberts for failing to adhere to a training and education course after he smashed a taxi window in the 2014 preseason.
Last year Roberts was accused of pulling the hair of a young woman in a Gold Coast nightclub and fined $20,000 for another incident at the Normanby Hotel in Brisbane.
He finished the 2016 season by visiting a Thailand rehabilitation facility to deal with “personal issues, including a battle with alcohol”.
But he had put those issues behind him and proudly wore the NSW colours at training yesterday in Coogee, Sydney.
“I guess I am surprised – it’s been a different journey but I wouldn’t change it for the world,” he said. “I have learned a lot of things along the way.
“It was Phil Gould and Wayne Bennett – they are the types of people that helped me along the way.
“I’ve got a really good relationship with Gus. When I was at Penrith, he really looked after me out there. He made me feel at home.”
Asked how he turned around his career, Roberts said: “There have been plenty of different things – maturity and my family. I’ve got a young family now, also my brothers and sisters.
“I want to be a good role model for them and to realise that I need to think of others before I make wrong decisions.
“At that time, Origin wasn’t in my mind. It was more about getting my head right and getting back to where I wanted to be, which was doing what I love, playing footy.”