Hansta
Im Bain's Boss!
- Joined
- May 25, 2007
- Messages
- 22,608
- Reaction score
- 1,649
http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/sp...-being-a-bulldog/story-e6frexnr-1225913544230
MAT Rogers can't help but ponder what might've been.
"Not many people know this, but Canterbury actually made me a much better offer than Cronulla to play rugby league [in 1994]," the retiring veteran revealed.
"The Sharks offered about $4000 and the Bulldogs something like $10,000."
With a surname synonymous with the Shire club, Rogers opted for the Sharks - but his reasons weren't purely sentimental.
"No mate," he said
"To tell you the truth I'm just no good with foreign places.
"I'd never lived around Canterbury, so I was bit worried about getting around.
"That's why I took less money and signed for the Sharks.
"But it was a bit hard to swallow when Canterbury won the comp the next year [in 1995] and I'm still searching for a premiership now."
In arguably the best form of his career on the Gold Coast, Rogers has a month left to avoid joining former Sharks teammate Andrew Ettingshausen as one of the true rugby league greats never to win a title.
Late Mail: all the ins and outs for NRL round 26
He ranks Cronulla's preliminary final loss to St George Illawarra in 1999 as the hardest moment to swallow, after the minor premiers blew an 8-0 lead when they were just 40 minutes away from the decider.
"It took me years to get over that," Rogers confessed.
"But at least there was a funny aftermath.
"Back at Sharkies Leagues this car draped in Dragons gear was doing laps of the carpark abusing us.
"They were so busy yelling, they crashed straight into a fence. It lifted a few spirits."
With an injury toll longer than his tattooist's appointment list, there's been plenty of times Rogers has needed cheering up as well.
The 34-year-old guessed he's been under the knife no less than 15 times and rated his first shoulder reconstruction as a defining moment.
"I had it done after my first year in grade and it was agony," he recalled.
"I told my brother [Donny] that if I ever had to go through that again, then I'd retire.
"Funnily enough I had the same thing done seven years later and it didn't seem to hurt as much."
Ironically Rogers is in doubt for tonight's crucial clash against Wests Tigers at Skilled Park with a painful hip pointer injury.
"Probably the only injury I've never had until now."
![[FKN-SIK]](/forum/data/avatars/m/1/1928.jpg?1456554858){kind=avatar}
