Sharks Steve Rodgers dies

[Granty]

http://www.abc.net.au/sport/content/200601/s1541011.htm

Sharks legend Rogers dies

Cronulla rugby league legend and club general manager Steve Rogers has been found dead in his unit in Sydney's south.

Sharks management said the 51-year-old, father of Wallaby utility Mat Rogers, had just returned from an overseas holiday.

Police said there were no suspicious circumstances.

Sharks football manager Greg Pierce said the news had come as a terrible shock.

"Unbelievable, he was due back at work on Monday and I was due to go off for a couple of weeks," he said.

"He's been away on holidays in Europe for a period and we were just going to swap over where the state of the nation was sort of thing, and it's quite unbelievable the fact that he won't be there."

[nq_gurl]

League legend Steve Rogers found dead

3 January 2006


Former Cronulla Sharks and Australian rugby league great Steve Rogers has been found dead in his unit in Sydney's southern suburbs.

Sharks management have confirmed the 51-year-old had just returned from an overseas holiday with police saying there were no suspicious circumstances surrounding the death.

Sharks football manager Greg Pierce says the news had come as a great shock.

Rogers was the chief executive of the Cronulla NRL club and had an outstanding career as a player with the Sharks and the Australian rugby league team.

The gifted centre played 199 Games for Cronulla between 1973 and 1982 with a farewell season in 1985.

He scored 1255 points for the club during those years including 82 tries and 502 goals.

In the intervening years Rogers played with St George, featuring in 25 games.

His representative career was no less impressive, the skilful back featuring in 19 games for NSW and 21 Tests for the Kangaroos.

Rogers' son Mat was a former player with the Sharks, also representing at state and national level before making a successful move to rugby union in 2002.


http://www.nrl.com/news.cfm?ID=13411

[Bernster]

http://news.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=79657

League mourns death of Steve Rogers

Tuesday Jan 3 17:38 AEDT

The rugby league fraternity is in mourning after Sharks and Australian great Steve Rogers was found dead at his Cronulla home in Sydney's south.

Police were not treating his death as suspicious but a cause of death was not immediately known.

Early indications suggested Rogers had suffered a heart attack.

The 51-year-old was found shortly after 9am on the landing of his unit by his brother-in-law after he'd failed to make it to a breakfast get-together.

Rogers was widely regarded as one of the best players of the 1970s, a skilful footballer who was equally at home in the centres, five-eighth or lock.

He played 21 Tests for Australia, went on three Kangaroo tours and also represented NSW 20 times in a senior rugby league career that spanned from 1973 to 1986.

In 1975, Rogers received the game's highest individual honour when he was awarded the Rothmans Medal.

A veteran of 231 premiership games, including 202 for the Sharks, Rogers went on to become a successful administrator and was the general manager of the Cronulla side until he died.

Rogers played grand finals for Cronulla against Manly in 1973 and 1978 and strove to take the Sharks to a premiership title - something the club had not done since entering the national competition in 1967.

"I'm a firm believer it will make people even stronger for him, I can't say much more," an emotional Cronulla chairman Barry Pierce said.

Former St George and Australian teammate Rod Reddy believed Rogers was without peer as a player when at the peak of his powers.

"I probably rated Steve Rogers in the era that I played in as the most complete player there was," Reddy said.

Former Canberra centre Mal Meninga, who roomed with Rogers on the 1982 Kangaroo tour, said Rogers had taken him under his wing and showed him the ropes "both on the footy field and off the footy field."

"He was a great character, well respected within the team and obviously he reached some really great heights as far as his career was concerned as well," Meninga said.

Quick off the mark, a silky ball player and a more than capable goalkicker, Rogers held the Sharks' all-time pointscoring record for all grades of 1,281 before being overtaken by his son Mat in 2001.

Mat Rogers left the club to start a successful rugby union career in 2002.

The NSW Waratahs issued a statement saying the 29-year-old would be granted compassionate leave from the state side until he is ready to return.

Australian Rugby League chairman Colin Love also paid tribute to Rogers, describing him as "one of the great champions of the game's post-war years".

"Our hearts go out to Steve's family and many friends," Love said.

"His death at 51 is first and foremost a human tragedy - but it's such a tragedy too for rugby league and for Australian sport.

"Players of such talent come along very rarely in any game - and ours will remember him as one of the great ones."

NRL chief executive David Gallop described Rogers' passing as "a huge shock for everyone".

"He was an absolute champion of our game and in more recent years a really dedicated official," Gallop said.

"He loved his club. I can well remember going into Sharks dressing rooms - win or lose (and) his passion was there for everyone to see for his club and they must be absolutely reeling (at Cronulla) ..."

Rogers, whose first wife Carol died of cancer in 2001, is survived by his second wife Ingrid and children Mat, Don and Melanie.

[Granty]

http://townsvillebulletin.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,7034,17723671%255E23209,00.html

Vale, Steve Rogers 1954 - 2006

By Ian Heads
04jan06

Steve Rogers

Rugby league player and administrator. Born Sydney, November 29, 1954
Died January 3, aged 51

AT the start he was just an amiable long-haired surfie-type kid with a crook nickname and a style that could be called relaxed. But at yesterday's shocking ending when an apparent heart attack ended his life at 51, Steve 'Sludge' Rogers had long since taken his place in rugby league's pantheon - rightly acclaimed as one of the code's greatest players.

The death of the Sharks general manager will be felt very deeply through a shire which has lived through troubled times recently and the news will sound sad bells today right across rugby league's wider world.

Rogers was, arguably, the supreme champion among all Sharks footballers of the past 39 seasons. A Cronulla junior, he was, in the truest sense, a local hero.

Notwithstanding the nickname and a rush to compare him with the incomparable Reg Gasnier early in his career, Rogers nonchalantly shrugged off such burdens to carve out a wonderful 14-year career at the top.

The incongruous nickname 'Sludge' (mud, slush or mire) was landed on him for obscure reasons in his early days at the Sharks. It was almost as if Rogers set out on a career path determined to belie such a sobriquet, and he kept doing it right to the end as a footballer.

As a youngster he was a dazzling, dashing, quick-footed centre who came to first grade at 18, played in the toughest of all grand finals - against Manly in 1973 - and whose talent was so electrifying that he was promptly drafted for the Kangaroo tour.

Tommy Bishop, his coach and (early) mentor at the Sharks, reflected on him years later as a "rare, rare talent - the greatest all-round centre three-quarter I have seen".

Bob Fulton long ago called Rogers "the great all rounder" and there could be no argument.

The Rogers career stands as a magnificent example of a talented footballer acquiring different skills, learning, adjusting and changing his style as the years rolled on.

At the start he was a greased lightning centre, an athlete, fantastic on his feet. At the end, many seasons later, he was, often, a lock - a tough battle-hardened pro creating play, whose forte had now become his obliterating defence. No one could cut down an opponent like he could.

Through the changing years he was all of these things too: outstanding kicker (goals and general play), tryscorer (129 in his senior career), leader (he captained Australia) and progressively in that evolving career centre, five-eighth and lock forward.

The bare bones of his playing career are these: He played a total of 232 first grade games: for the Sharks(1973-82 and '85, 202 games) St George (1983-84, 29 games) and Widnes (1985-86, 1) and scored a total of 1374 points. He played 17 times for NSW pre-State of Origin, and four Origin matches, including the first in 1980. And he played 51 times for Australia, including 21 Tests and three World Series matches, and made three Kangaroos tours.

His grand total of points was 1571 from 311 games (129 tries, 582 goals and 10 field goals). The 1253 points he scored for the Sharks remains a club record. He also won the Rothmans Medal in 1975 and the Dally M in 1981.

Above all else in a career of achievement - although he fell short of the premiership win he dreamed of - Rogers will be remembered as not only one of the finest centres rugby league has seen but with Mick Cronin, half of one of the greatest partnerships.

Geoff Prenter, editor of Rugby League Week at the time Rogers burst on to the scene and a chronicler of his early years, yesterday called him "the classic centre, the complete package, the model for anyone who ever wanted to play centre".

A few years ago, trying to place him in space and time among the great centres I finally put 'Sludge' at No.5 - behind Gasnier, Mal Meninga, Dally Messenger and Dave Brown. It's a subject for argument.

There is a thread that links Rogers with Messenger, 'The Master', when it came to life after football. It concerns the perennial challenge for all sporting champions: how to match the first 30 years of achievement.

The Wallabies' captain of 1908, Herbert M. Moran, wrote memorably of Messenger in post-football years: "Somehow all the world went wrong with him."

It wasn't quite so with Rogers - but there were bad times, most notably the tragic deaths of his mother Marj, his father Don and his wife Carol, all from cancer.

And there were restless times when he searched, without finding, for something of further greatness he could do in rugby league.

There was a coaching stint in Queensland and administration roles in Darwin and Perth and simmering ambitions to coach at the top level - and an unsuccessful business venture as a pub owner at Lennox Head on the NSW north coast. Finally he came back to the place that was home, Cronulla, and became football manager, then general manager, of the club he loved.

As a rugby league scribe I covered the 1973 and 1978 Kangaroos campaigns in England and France and found Rogers to be an affable and decent man. He liked a beer and was a big card player - but was never less than professional in his approach to football.

In tribute yesterday, ARL chairman Colin Love identified a further dimension. "Notwithstanding Steve Rogers's pure qualities as a footballer he will be remembered as much for the way he played the game - always cleanly and fairly and in the true spirit of sportsmanship," Love said.

In reflecting on yesterday's sadness, the thought occurs that Rogers never really was much good at endings. For family, friends, fans he has left now far too soon - leaving only the memories and the clippings and the footage. His departure from the playing field back in the '80s was tragic and painful too - and far less than such a player deserved.

His last three games of rugby league were these: 1984 reserve grade grand final for St George, lost; 1985, Cronulla v Canterbury, his only game of the year, broken jaw after nine minutes; 1986, Widnes v Wigan, his only game of the year, broken leg after 13 minutes. And then it was over.

So Steve 'Sludge' Rogers didn't get the nickname his talent deserved, didn't get the golden ending in football he deserved - and as of yesterday's jolting news didn't get the long life he had undoubtedly looked forward to.

But within the game, as the seasons pass, he will be long remembered with great affection. His mate and centre partner Cronin yesterday called him "the complete footballer", which succinctly summed him up.

The tributes will come best of all in the quiet words of fans who can say with pride: "I saw Steve Rogers play."

[Yayarg]

Rogers had depression: son
January 4, 2006

WALLABIES star Mat Rogers has revealed his father, rugby league great Steve Rogers, was struggling to deal with depression in the time before his death.

The 51-year-old Cronulla legend was found dead shortly after 9am AEST yesterday on the landing of his unit by his brother-in-law after he failed to make it to a breakfast get-together.

Today his son said the coroner was continuing to investigate the circumstances into his father's death.

"Dad's sudden and unexpected death has been a tremendous shock to all of us," Mat Rogers told reporters.

"He was suffering from some depression and as a person of his stature and as a public figure he found it really hard to talk about these problems with other people, which therefore exacerbated the problem."

Rogers read from a prepared statement and would not answer any questions from the media.

He was supported by current Cronulla coach Stuart Raper, Sharks chairman Barry Pierce and accompanied by his model girlfriend Chloe Maxwell.

Steve Rogers is widely regarded as one of the greatest players of all-time, playing 231 premiership games including 202 for the Sharks.

He also played 21 Tests for Australia, including three as captain, made three Kangaroo tours and represented NSW 20 times in a senior rugby league career that spanned from 1973 to 1986.

Rogers went on to become a successful administrator and was the general manager of the Cronulla side until he died.

His son Mat played with the Sharks between 1995 and 2001.

Mat Rogers left the club to start a successful rugby union career in 2002.

AAP

[nq_gurl]

it will be sad if it is confirmed that he did indeed commit suicide. i wonder if they would even report it should that be the coroner's findings. im not sure if its the way the media report things or what but it seems that perhaps mat thinks he may have ended his own life ....

[The_Darkhorse]

Why bring up the depression otherwise?

[Granty]

http://foxsports.news.com.au/story/0,8659,17743880-23214,00.html

Rogers may have tried to call 000

January 6, 2006

FORMER Cronulla Sharks and Australia rugby league great Steve Rogers may have tried to dial triple-0 before he died but accidentally keyed in the wrong number.

According to his mobile phone records, the last number the former league star rang was 888.

His family believes he was trying to call triple-0 but, in his disoriented state and without his reading glasses, hit eight, which is above zero on his phone.

Rogers's mobile phone was nearby when his brother-in-law Ian Hipwell found the former league player slumped in the stairwell of his Cronulla unit block on Tuesday.

Rogers's wife, Ingrid, says she firmly believes her husband did not intentionally take his own life.

A close family friend also said the notes Rogers left did not refer to any suicide thoughts.

Rogers, who was on anti-depressants and had been out drinking, tried to get the attention of his neighbour in the early hours of Tuesday but his neighbour did not answer the knocks on his door fearing it was hoons.

AAP

[nq_gurl]

Bit worried about the following article published in the Bully today. Now as far as I'm aware, suicide is still just a current speculation in relation to Rogers.

Depression Takes Toll

Suicide and depression have taken a heavy toll on Australia's elite.

In the past year alone, Crowded House drummer Paul Hester, stockbroker Rene Rivkin and this week Sydney rugby league great Steve Rogers have taken their own lives.

(and the article continues).

Then in the editorial:

Depression needs to be looked into
06jan06
THE revelation that rugby league legend Steve Rogers suffered from depression highlights an issue that is fast becoming a health problem of epidemic proportions in Australia.

Rogers, acknowledged as one of the game's greatest, was said by his son Mat to have struggled with depression.

And it was precisely because of his stature in the sporting world that he had problems talking about it or getting help. The fact that suicide and depression go hand in hand is of obvious concern.

Research shows that men, in particular, feel they can't talk about being depressed for fear of being perceived as a failure. Depression affects a growing number of Australians and health authorities were at pains this week to point out that it was an illness like all other illnesses.

Treatment is available and it can work, they say. But Australians need to hear more about the fact that successful treatment can lead to resumption of a normal life if wider community acceptance of depression and mental illness is to happen.

Australian Bureau of Statistics figures show that 2213 Australians died from suicide in 2003. The suicide rate for men was 17.7 per 100,000, compared with the rate for women of 4.7 per 100,000.

The tragedy surrounding Steve Rogers' family this week is something thousands of Australians have, or will deal with, in their lifetimes.

If anything can come of his early death, perhaps it is the knowledge that even those we hold in the highest esteem find themselves unable to cope at times. It is a knowledge which will do little to help the Rogers family as they struggle to come to terms with the loss of a loved parent but if it makes more Australians aware of the curse of the 'black dog' then Steve Rogers' death won't have been in vain.

[Yayarg]

Rogers may have tried to call 000
January 6, 2006

FORMER Cronulla Sharks and Australia rugby league great Steve Rogers may have tried to dial triple-0 before he died but accidentally keyed in the wrong number.

According to his mobile phone records, the last number the former league star rang was 888.

His family believes he was trying to call triple-0 but, in his disoriented state and without his reading glasses, hit eight, which is above zero on his phone.

Rogers's mobile phone was nearby when his brother-in-law Ian Hipwell found the former league player slumped in the stairwell of his Cronulla unit block on Tuesday.

Rogers's wife, Ingrid, says she firmly believes her husband did not intentionally take his own life.

A close family friend also said the notes Rogers left did not refer to any suicide thoughts.

Rogers, who was on anti-depressants and had been out drinking, tried to get the attention of his neighbour in the early hours of Tuesday but his neighbour did not answer the knocks on his door fearing it was hoons.

AAP

[leesee]

http://www.nrl.com/news.cfm?ID=13426

League community farewells Steve Rogers

7 January 2006


Past and present champions from both rugby codes have paid tribute to the "aura" of league legend Steve Rogers, who died last Tuesday.

A 1000 mourners packed the Shire Christian Centre in the southern Sydney suburb of Sutherland, with around 300 people outside listening to an audio-feed of the service.

Rogers, who was 51, was found dead last Tuesday morning in the stairwell of the block of units where he lived with his second wife Ingrid.

A giant cast of league and union greats turned up to farewell legendary Cronulla centre Rogers, who played 21 Tests for the Kangaroos and was widely regarded as one of the great players of his generation.

The list of rugby league identities present included Graeme Langlands, Bob Fulton, Johnny Raper, Ted Goodwin, Garry Jack, Ray Price and Steve Mortimer.

Several Wallaby and Waratah teammates of one of Roger's sons, Mat, attended the service, including Lote Tuqiri, Morgan Turinui, Wendell Sailor, Adam Freir and NSW captain Chris Whitaker.

National Rugby League boss David Gallop and Olympic swimming legend Dawn Fraser were among the other notable sporting identities present.

Wallaby back Mat gave a touching eulogy to his father and like a number of speakers touched on the "aura" his father possessed.

"Dad will always be remembered for his divine talent on the football field, but his talent to entertain people after, was probably his greatest," Mat Rogers recalled.

"People wanted to be with Dad, some because of who he was, but most were attracted by the aura he used."

Mat and other speakers referred to the patience and affability Rogers showed invariably to the hoards of fans who clamoured for an autograph or a moment of his time after games.

"'Sludge' loved a drink, loved a punt and loved being with people, so much so he was usually the last to leave."

Mat described his dad and his mother Carol, who died almost five years ago, as the dynamic duo, the original party animals, who together or individually could light a room and turn anything to a celebration.

"Dad, I'm so proud of you. You're my hero. I know when mum died a part of you died with her and now the dynamic duo are back together again.

Former Balmain lock Neil Pringle described Rogers as `the man with a heart as big as Makybe Diva and as soft as Mother Theresa'.

Rogers' two other children, son Don and daughter Melanie, also made touching contributions to the service.

Don produced a song and Melanie read a poem, while the crowd inside the Centre also watched a visual tribute to Rogers.

Mat Rogers also recalled the very first piece of advice he received from his dad following his first football game at the age of four.

"The ball came to me so I passed it to my mate and then I proceeded to tackle him," Mat recalled.

"He put his arms around me and said to me: `gee, you're a great tackler but when I said tackle the man with the ball, I meant the guy in the other coloured jersey.'"

"He was a guy who had an aura around him, he commanded respect, he was a great organiser and a leader," Ingrid Rogers said.

Mat was among the pall-bearers, with the crowd outside the Centre breaking into a spontaneous round of applause as the hearse pulled away.

[nq_gurl]

http://www.nrl.com/news.cfm?ID=13426





Mat described his dad and his mother Carol, who died almost five years ago, as the dynamic duo, the original party animals, who together or individually could light a room and turn anything to a celebration.

"Dad, I'm so proud of you. You're my hero. I know when mum died a part of you died with her and now the dynamic duo are back together again.

.

i realise that your parents are always your parents ... heard to forget ... and especially when they are seperated by reasons out of human control .... but i wonder if Mat got on with the step mum.

that article was well written though :thumbright:

[nq_gurl]

just saw the news report on channel 7's news - let me tell you, i dont handle funerals well at all and just hearing a small amount of exerpts .... absolutely no difference. hearing Mat's voice shaking, sharing stories, calling his dad "my hero" ... hearing Melanie call him 'Papabear" ... hearing Don sing .... watching them trying to awkwrdly manouveur the coffin out of the centre and into the hearse. it was all very moving and a very fitting tribute to the legend.