
As a teenager, FOG# 111, Mat Rogers, was already a rugby league tragic.
He was playing rugby league when he was four years old.
As he grew up he couldn’t watch enough games on TV or tapes of old games.
By his own admission, he was obsessed with the game.
The son of one of the game’s greatest players, Steve Rogers -- a Cronulla legend who stood alongside St George icon Reg Gasnier as one of the best centres to ever lace on a boot – rugby league was part of his DNA.
“I grew up having Steve Rogers as my dad,” he says.
“From 1980 onwards, when I started playing rugby league, my dad had tapes and tapes of games he’d played on old VHF tapes.
When Rogers started playing footy on the Gold Coast as a kid, he admits he wasn’t the fastest, strongest or fittest, but he possessed an instinct and awareness on the field that other kids didn’t, probably from all the tapes he had watched.
“I just remember putting myself in positions where I needed to be to score tries, I could read a game, ” he said.
“I was never going to run over blokes or be the fastest runner in the team, but I guess I was more committed than most and worked bloody hard.”
Rogers begins this interview by declaring his life is already “an open book”.
“It’s all out there,” says Rogers, who wrote a tell-all biography on his life a few years ago called A Father’s Son—a book about family, football, and forgiveness.

But Mat’s story traverses being a champion rugby league and rugby star.
It’s an emotional and touching story of personal tragedy, heartbreak, and the strength, courage, and determination he found within himself to rise above it all to become his own champion.
Being the sibling of a sporting champion can often bring with it the heavy burden of expectation which is too much for some to carry.
But Mat loved the fact his father was a rugby league great.
“It was fun, I loved it,” he said.
“People expected me to be a good footballer and I rose to that.
“It gave me confidence. My dad was Steve Rogers, one of the greatest players to play.
“I naively believed because I was his son, I was going to be great.
“I had this mindset: ‘There’s no way anyone can be better than me, I’m Steve Rogers’ son’ and I think it helped me.”
Steve Rogers retired as Cronulla’s greatest points scorer with 1250 points.
Mat is the club’s second-highest point scorer with 1112 points.
They were both named in the club’s 2006 Dream Team and also the 2017 announcement of its 50 year celebration, confirming their place as arguably the best father-and-son combination to play the game.
As a young, rebellious teenager, Rogers found himself on the wrong side of the law -- and his father -- after making some poor decisions.
His father was a tough disciplinarian.
When he went off the rails, in his early teenage years, his father made some tough calls that ultimately helped him shape his life.
“I lived in a time when if you played up, you got a flogging from your father.
“Me and my brother played up a lot,” he laughs.
“I did some dumb shit when I was a kid that embarrassed dad.
“I got arrested when I was 12 or 13 years old, ended up in juvenile detention and went to court which did not sit well with my father.
“I stopped playing football and just went surfing when I was 13.
“I got sent to boarding school at Southport and it turned my life around.
“My Dad said: 'You went in as a boy and came out a man.
“He was right.”
Rogers vividly remembers the night his father died at the age of 51 at the peak of his rugby league career.
“I just wish I knew how bad his situation was and the mental torture he was going through,” says Rogers.
Mat’s mother was in palliative care at the time and his father struggled to deal with it, so much so their relationship fell apart and they found it difficult to communicate.
Mat had to identify his father’s body.
Afterwards, he spent some hours laying beside his father talking to him and asking him questions they had had never really discussed.
“I asked him why he never said he was proud of me or told me openly he loved me,” says Rogers on the night his father slipped away.
“While in my grief, I asked him those things, I knew in my heart he loved me and was proud of me.

“I would have liked to have heard him say it more, but that was the way it was back then.”
A father of four, Jack and Skyla to a previous marriage, and Max and Phoenix to his current wife, Chloe, a multi-skilled media entrepreneur, Mat learned a lesson from his late father to always tell his children and family he loved them.
“My relationship with my dad had a profound impact on me,” says Rogers.
“I am forever trying to help my kids and I tell them all the time I love them to death.
“It’s probably overkill, to be honest.”
Mat’s third child, Max, was born autistic.
“Birthdays, school, just talking to them, all the little things you take for granted, you feel you are going to miss out on.
“I still remember when I was told about Max being autistic.
My wife Chloe was in tears questioning if he was going to get married, find a girlfriend, go to school or even drive a car.
“All those fears just come flooding into your mind.

“It’s hard. It’s a slow process and you get in a big hole and wonder if you are ever going to get out of it.
“I remember sitting on my front porch one day thinking to myself: ‘What have I done, what have I done to deserve this’.
“It embarrasses me now to admit I said that because now, I feel like I have been blessed, not punished.”
Rogers had to put back our interview for a few hours to take Max for a driving lesson.
“Max is about to get his P-plates, he is so independent now,” says Rogers, the pride evident in his voice.
“He’s got a job and starts TAFE next year.”
Had someone told Rogers things were going to turn out the way they had 15 years ago, “I would have wanted to knock their block off,”
“I couldn’t see it.”
“Max couldn’t talk, he was disengaged with his family before he was diagnosed and started treatment.
“He’s been a work in progress for 16 years.
It still grates Rogers that people say he should have played Origin for NSW like his father because he was born in the state before moving to the Gold Coast when he was nine.
“My mum was a Gold Coast girl with 13 brothers and sisters,” he says.
“I grew up on the Gold Coast starting with the Under-12s.
Mat tells a story of the time Wayne Bennett called him out of the blue to ask if he would play Origin for Queensland.
“Wayne did want an answer straight away, even though I would have said yes, instead he told me to ring my dad out of respect.
“Wayne said to ring my dad and make sure it’s alright with him before you give me your answer.”
“I did what Wayne asked and my dad said: ‘You’ve played for Queensland your whole life, your mum will break down in tears when you tell her you are playing Origin for Queensland.”
“The next call was to his mum who burst into tears.
“The next call was to Wayne to tell him ‘I’m in’.
“The Origin team wasn’t scheduled to be named for another two weeks.
“Wayne made it clear to me that if my name appeared anywhere in the media as being in the Queensland side, I’d never be chosen to play for the Maroons.

“That was tough for a young man. I was hoping my dad wouldn’t say anything but he knew I’d given my word to Wayne.”
“People say I was born in NSW,.
“I don’t give a shit where I was born my heart was all about Queensland where I grew up. I grew up on the beaches at Broadbeach and went to Broadbeach State School, Merrimac High School and Southport School and I played for Queensland.
“It still irks me the way they complain because the first halfback to play for NSW was Peter Sterling, and he was born in Toowoomba which the last time I looked, was in Queensland,” he scoffed.
Rogers had an unforgettable Origin debut in 1999 scoring all the points, including a late match-winning field goal at Suncorp Stadium when Queensland scaped home 9-8.
Rogers remembers blowing a try as much as he remembers his match-winning kick.
“I don’t remember a lot of games and stuff but I remember that moment getting in behind the ruck and catching Jason Hetherington’s eye.
“I knew Dalton (Hetherington’s nickname) was going to pass me the ball.
“The rest is history. It was a bludger of a kick but I knocked over the field goal and we won 9-8.”
Rogers related a little-known story about his father and how highly regarded he was held within the game.

“My dad roomed with a young Mal Meninga on the 1986 Kangaroo Tour,” he said.
“Some years later, when Mal was given his immortal jacket in 2018, he told my brother: ‘This could have easily been your old man’s’.
“If he hadn’t broken his jaw and his leg he probably would have gone on the 1990 Kangaroo Tour as the first play to have been on four.”
Steve Rogers was one of the best centres to ever play the game.
His son Mat was also a champion -- but don’t try to compare him with his famous father.
“You can’t compare me to him, he was on a different level to me.
“I never dominated the game like he did.
“He was a special talent and an even more special man.