Whole New Ball Game For Rogers

Sydney Morning Herald

Saturday February 10, 2007

Brad Walter

The former Wallaby has been doing the hard yards to get up to league's speed, writes Brad Walter.

TODAY is the day Mat Rogers finally joins his new Gold Coast Titans teammates at training.

After a belated start to pre-season training due to his unexpected decision to quit rugby and return to the NRL a year ahead of schedule, Rogers has spent the past 26 days trying to catch up to the fitness levels of the remainder of the squad.

And as he swam, cycled and ran along the soft sand of the tourist strip's famous beaches, the dual international found the work harder than he remembered from his eight seasons at Cronulla before switching codes in late 2001.

"I don't think I've ever trained as hard as what I am training now," Rogers said. "The training is a lot different to what I've been accustomed to over the past five years. You really know that you've worked hard and every day you go home and lay down and feel a little bit sorry for yourself after what your body has been put through.

"There were times I went through that in rugby but the intensity wasn't there as often. The first two weeks, in particular, were hell. Every day I was in pain and every day I would wake up even sorer. It wasn't for about two weeks that I started to wake up feeling a bit better than I had the day before."

With two sessions a day, Rogers has had little time for anything else and when the Herald caught up with him on the Gold Coast this week he was picking up a new pushbike and cycling gear.

Under the gruelling program devised by renowned fitness guru Billy Johnstone, Rogers has spent plenty of time in the saddle; regularly peddling 70 kilometres return to Ormeau in the Gold Coast hinterland, or riding the undulated hills popular with triathletes on the way to the Currumbin rock pools.

The recently turned 31-year-old has been swimming up to 40 laps of the Miami Olympic Pool four times a week, while Johnstone has also had him swimming at Currumbin, and climbing the sand hills nearby.

"I knew it would be tough but I'm over that hump now, thankfully, and as hard as it has been I've really enjoyed going to training and getting flogged," Rogers said. "I feel fantastic and I can't wait to start playing now."

Not considered for next weekend's opening pre-season hit-out against Melbourne at Coffs Harbour, Rogers will make his first appearance for the Titans as a centre in one of the NRL premiership newcomers' trials.

"I look forward to that. I was actually trying to get there for eight years while I was at Cronulla and I didn't get a chance. I think I played one or two games in the centres but that was about it," he said. "But it's a different game, you don't realise how different the two games are these days until you come back. The rugby league game is so speed orientated these days and I've just got to learn how to fit in.

"I know that I can do it, I've done it before. That's not saying I'm going to go out there and set the world alight in the first game I play but I'm pretty confident. It's in my blood. Hopefully I will be better for the experience I've had since I played before and my body will certainly be better for the training I've done."

However, Rogers admits that he feared having broken his ankle when he rolled it on the first day he joined the Titans, and after an injury riddled rugby career with the Waratahs and Wallabies, there are some in both codes with doubts about his durability.

It was the constant travel, though, as well as other personal issues that prompted him to ask for a release from the remaining year of his ARU contract, and if Steve Turner and Brian Carney hadn't reneged on deals with the Titans, Rogers would have been sitting on the sidelines this season.

"I came up here regardless of what was going to happen," Rogers said. "I wanted to get away from Sydney and Cronulla in particular. I was unemployed for a month, I got released and didn't have a deal up here.

"Fortunately Steve Turner didn't come and left a bit of money in the salary cap and then Brian Carney retired so it all worked out well. With all of the hard training I've been doing, my whole body feels better from my feet to my head, so I'm looking forward to getting out there now and playing some footy again."

© 2007 Sydney Morning Herald

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