Mat Rogers’ heartbreak: “It was horrifying. It still haunts me”
Mat Rogers’ codes switch was bookended by tragedy but gave him a ‘brotherhood’ and plenty of rebellious tattoos.
Deep in grief and desperate to reset his relationship with his father, Mat Rogers walked away from rugby league to become a Wallaby.
Rugby gave him a brotherhood — but it also made him rebellious and inflicted a defeat that haunts him to this day.
Rogers opens up like never before in Wednesday’s episode of The Breakdown, The Australian’s ball-tearing new podcast investigation into how rugby went from the grandstand to the doghouse.
Along with George Gregan and Justin Harrison, Rogers talks about the heartbreaking moment English star Jonny Wilkinson kicked that field goal — the one that killed Australia’s 2003 World Cup dream.
Rogers had been a rugby league star at Cronulla when rugby union came for him.
While he had been a promising rugby junior, Rogers made his name in rugby league.
He had played 123 first-grade games and scored more than 1100 points for the Sharks, as well as representing Queensland and Australia. So Rogers shocked the rugby league community when he signed with the Waratahs in 2001.
Back then he was being managed by his dad – Sharks legend Steve – but with that came complications and tension.
He recalls his mum Carol, on her deathbed, holding his hand and telling him to leave rugby league.
“She held my hand and told me, ‘You‘ve got to go’,” Rogers says. “You’ve got to get away from your dad, it’s too much for you two. And I hate seeing you fight. I hate seeing you not talking’.”
Rogers then sat down with Steve to tell him he had to stop being his manager for the sake of their relationship.
“I spoke to Dad about it, and already Mum had spoken to Dad about it, and he knew it was coming,” Rogers says. “And then we sort of cried and hugged and he apologised. And we sort of moved on.”
The Cronulla Sharks offered him the enormous sum of $450,000 to stay – but still he broke away to rugby for the sake of his family. The change of code became the best thing for the father and the son. They started being just a “father and son” again. They went fishing, played golf. They just hung out.
“I wanted to get into an environment that he knew nothing about really, and wasn’t interested in,” Rogers said. “It was a pretty ugly situation that fortunately was rectified by me moving on.”
And what did he bring to union? A voracious will to win.
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In Wednesday’s episode of The Breakdown, Rogers’ captain at the time, George Gregan, observes the rugby league players who made the switch to rugby union had a “hunger” for victory.
“They just knew how to win,” Gregan says.
Rogers says Australian rugby league’s attitude is similar to the All Blacks.
“It’s like you put that green and gold jersey on, in rugby league you don’t lose,” Rogers says.
“We own this turf, it is ours, no one’s better than us. And it was just a psyche … and the All Blacks certainly have it.
“You know, the guys that went over to rugby, I mean, we’re incredibly fortunate. I mean, they won five Bledisloe Cups in a row, they’d come off the back of the World Cup trophy, they owned every trophy in the cabinet you could own. So there’s no shortage of success, and I think we just added to it, you know, I mean, we just came in and expected to win.”
Rogers spent five seasons at the Waratahs and would go on to play 45 Tests for the Wallabies, helping them to a win the Bledisloe Cup in 2002 – the last time Australia held the trophy.
Then came 2003.
Rogers has never watched a replay of that heartbreaking World Cup final. He doesn’t need to. He can remember every second of Jonny Wilkinson’s kick that ended Australia’s World Cup dream of 2003.
“I’m standing right next to the ruck, looking at him, watching him kick it, I had jumped a little bit early, and the referee just ‘15 don’t move’, otherwise you’ll get penalised, and I knew we were done,” Rogers.
“I looked to either side of me, not to give him a hard time. But I had Justin Harrison on one side of me, and on the other side of me was Phil Waugh. And I thought there is no way in the world they are getting to him. And I was the only chance and I jumped a little bit, then the halfback messed around with the ball a little bit, I thought he picked it up, so I moved.
“And then he went back into the ruck and the ref says, ‘15, don’t move’. And I knew then it was game over. There’s a picture of it, the two boys running, chargin’, with desperation in their face, reaching as he is kicking the goal, and I am standing five metres behind, just with my head in the air watching the ball sail over their heads, that’s a pretty horrifying picture for me, emblazoned in my mind.
“It was horrifying. It still haunts me.”
While he helped Australia to some great victories, and no doubt attracted fans through the turnstiles, at times Rogers felt some in the administration spoke down to him. He got into some off-field trouble, drinking too much.
And he rebelled against the administration, showing his feelings in the most obvious way he could: by covering his skin with tattoos.
“There were times when I thought I felt like (the ARU) wanted my skills, but they didn’t want me,” Rogers.
“And it sort of forced me to rebel a little bit. To be honest, it forced me like, I didn’t have any tattoos before I went to rugby. I had a little one on my back, and it was pretty immature of me really. I thought, ‘you know what, I’ll just do something you don’t like then and I’ll keep playing good and get tattoos and I’ll look really anti-social and you’ll hate it’.
“But, you know, I will keep playing well enough to get picked and you won‘t be able to do anything about it.
“And now looking back … it was just a moment where you just sort of, I thought, well … I felt like I got spoken down to it quite a bit. It was quite frustrating. Not by any players, I mean, the playing group were phenomenal. They really were. I mean, even to the point, you know, by Burkey (Matt Burke) … the best fullback in the world, moved to outside centre to accommodate me and the team because he thinks my best position is going to be fullback.
“I get to the Wallabies and end up displacing Chris Latham from the fullback position that I thought was his and he just supported me every step of the way. We trained together, he helped me understand the game. The players were unbelievable … the players want to win because … administrators want to win, too. But administrators don’t spend time on the field and they don’t understand what it takes to win on the field. Some of them do because they’re players, but a lot of them don’t, and they get the nose out of joint about some things.”
Rogers says the loss of his mum Carol set him on a path towards rebellion.
“You know what really sort of drove me to write this rebellious sort of thing against them, after I lost Mum, my Mum was my sort of moral compass,” Rogers says.
“And she was the one that held everything together, so when she left, when she died, I could just do what I wanted and didn’t have to worry about any repercussion from a moral standpoint from my Mum.
“And it was a bad place to be for a while, a really bad place, because if someone annoyed me, I would go, ‘you’re right. How can I annoy them worse?’ And it took a little while for me to grow out of that.”
Rogers was embroiled in a drunken incident in Scotland which police investigated. He was later cleared by an ARU disciplinary committee.
It was a “hard conversation” with his father who said “you need to zip it and listen for five minutes”, that woke him up to his “immature behaviour” and carry on in rugby union.
“It was probably a bit of a turning point in my life, feeling about taking a bit more responsibility and growing up,” he says.
But then his father Steve suddenly passed away, and life was flipped upside down again. Steve took his own life at his Cronulla home.
Rogers slipped Steve’s watch off his hand when he saw his father’s body in the stairwell.
He had left his children a note. Rogers is currently writing an autobiography and is expected to touch on the tragedies of losing his parents.
In December 2006, Rogers was released from the final year of his contract with the ARU and Waratahs for personal reasons. He moved to the Gold Coast and played rugby league for the Titans from 2007.
Today the 45-year-old remembers his time in rugby as giving him best friends for life, a “rugby brotherhood”.
“The positive thing (about going to rugby) was the fact that I got my relationship with my Dad and I got to experience, you know, the world now as an athlete,” Rogers says.
“I got to make some amazing friends that to this day that I call on, ask advice, speak to. I do often. It’s hard to explain to people that haven’t lived in that circle.”
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