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GOLD COAST - Mat Rogers reckons his father Steve will be smiling down from heaven watching his son's anticipated return to rugby league this weekend but sledging him for joining the wrong team.
After a five-year stint in rugby union, Gold Coast utility Rogers will play a National
Rugby League trial against Parramatta in Lismore on Saturday night but sadly his father, who died in January last year, won't be there to see it.
Former test and New South Wales centre Steve Rogers is a Cronulla legend and was chief executive of the Sydney club when he died after swallowing a combination of prescription drugs and alcohol.
"He'd be happy (about my comeback to rugby league) but he'd be bagging me that I wasn't playing at Cronulla," dual international Rogers says from the Titans' training camp in Coffs Harbour.
"He's a league man through and through and that's understandable.
"He never came and watched too many (rugby union) games but he was always proud of what I did."
Rogers sacrificed a lucrative contract with the Australian Rugby Union and a potential World Cup spot to join the Titans a year earlier than expected.
Some believe he quit rugby because he was unhappy with the game and was starved of the ball but the 31-year-old former Kangaroos and Queensland Origin winger is quick to debunk that myth.
"I played fullback, five-eighth, centre and I got plenty of touches," he noted.
"It never bothered me. If you want the ball you'll find it."
The decision to drift back to rugby league was based more around his family and lifestyle.
Rogers said he grew weary of the travel involved in rugby union and wanted to spend more time with partner Chloe Maxwell, a TV presenter and model, and their eight-month-old son Max.
"I really enjoyed the rugby union lifestyle for five years but I always knew I loved the rugby league lifestyle as well," Rogers said.
"Now I've got the opportunity to live it again and I'm stoked with that.
"I've got a young baby and want to spend more time raising our son.
"I've really struggled with the travel over the past couple of years and it really makes it tough, particularly after the recent events that have gone down."
Rogers was referring to the death of his father and the attempted suicide of his brother Don last year.
He's started a new chapter in his life on the Gold Coast and prefers to talk about his football rather than dwell on the past.
Intent on focusing wholeheartedly on the Titans and hoping to prolong his career following a string of injuries since switching codes in 2001, Rogers has ruled himself out of playing representative football again.
"I've done enough on the rep side of things," he said.
"It's time for the younger blokes to come through and do that."
The pace of the NRL has lifted considerably since he played for the Sharks but after four weeks of intense training under fitness guru Billy Johnstone, Rogers says he's ready for the adjustment.
"I think I'll be OK," he says.
"It's going to be tough but it's just a matter of playing enough games and you get better at it.
"It's about getting on the field, getting match fitness and getting accustomed to the players around me."
Rogers says he hasn't missed rugby union but he also never pined for rugby league when he played for the NSW Waratahs and the Wallabies.
"You're busy doing something else and you focus on that," he said.
"You don't concern yourself with what was."
Not taking anything for granted, Rogers intends to soak up the twilight years of his career before it all comes to a shuddering halt.
"I remember my first season at Cronulla and ET (former Sharks skipper Andrew Ettingshausen) told me to enjoy it because it'll all be over before you know it," Rogers says.
"That was 13 years ago. It all goes pretty quick."
- AAP