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North Queensland have pulled out of the race to sign unwanted Sydney Roosters captain Braith Anasta.
The disgruntled Roosters star is believed to have been shopped around to interested NRL clubs as the Roosters attempt to keep their grand final roster together while building the club around young halves Todd Carney and Mitchell Pearce.
Parramatta have reportedly already knocked back an offer for Anasta, who has one year to run on his contract, to join the Eels for 2011.
In September last year Cowboys skipper Johnathan Thurston begged the club to “throw the cheque book at (Anasta)” in a bid to reunite the former Bulldogs teammates.
But it appears Thurston’s request has fallen on deaf ears, with Cowboys football manager Peter Parr said the club had no intentions of re-opening negotiations.
“We were interested in having a chat with him at the time, but the Roosters were clear that they weren’t prepared to let him out the last year of his contract and that’s where it finished,” Parr told AAP.
“We haven’t had any further discussions since back then.
“You always look for ways to improve and you do that by adding quality players, but our information is that the Roosters weren’t prepared to let him leave his contract early.
“I don’t know whether that has changed or not since then.”
Regardless of Anasta’s availability, Parr said the Townsville-based team were not in a position to put an offer to the former Australian and NSW representative after going on a significant spending spree that has netted Brent Tate, Dallas Johnson, Ashton Sims and Glenn Hall.
“We are a little bit tighter under the cap than we were (in September), and we’ve had no correspondence from his manager, the Roosters or anything like that … we just haven’t discussed it any further,” Parr added.
“We are absolutely happy with the group that we’ve put together.”
Furious Roosters fans have started a petition that will be sent to tricolours chief executive Steve Noyce in a bid to keep Anasta at the foundation club.
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