Surely Rogers is well qualified to speak out against this lazy and complacent training culture, after all, he is used to the rigours of the infinitely more vigorous training regime that exists in rugby league.
Former union great Des Connor, the only player to have captained both the Wallabies and the All Blacks, admits Australian rugby hasn’t adjusted to the advent of professionalism as well as the dreaded Poms have. “They adapted to professionalism and structuring their rugby better than we have,” he says. “England have all these players coming through a graded system at club level.”
Club rugby in Australia has a laid back, leisurely atmosphere, where often the on-field proceedings are incidental to the chambray shirt and corduroy wearing spectators, some of whom invariably use the match programme to gently clap whenever a try is scored.
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Compare this to the proceedings at a routine club game at Leicester’s Welland Road, where spectators invariably know they’re on the premises to see a serious rugby match.
Rogers’ critics know this all too well, which leads one to suspect he’s just got up their noses by telling the truth. Nor can he have endeared himself any further with suggestions that rugby league will continue to be a source of talent for union to plunder.
Sadly, a small but smarmy snobocracy thinks it can continue to act as the moral custodian of rugby union in Australia. Mat Rogers has caught the toffs on the hop, which can only be a good thing.
And it will be great to see Rogers let his performances do the talking in the Wallabies upcoming tour of France and the British Isles, even if his critics continue to carp from the sidelines.
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