Anyone who has attended a rugby match will have seen him from a distance. The anorak, the slightly rounded shoulders from decades of lugging his equipment around, the broad smile and, at certain times of year, the trademark tan. If there is a game happening Dave Rogers will probably be there photographing it for Getty Images, always assuming he has remembered to remove his lens cap.
It is one of the trade’s timeless gags: for as long as newspapers exist there will be snappers (photographers) and hacks (writers) disputing each other’s respective worth. Is every picture really worth a thousand words? According to Rogers, who was patrolling sodden touchlines long before today’s players were even born, it is barely a contest.
“Take the 2003 Rugby World Cup final. People remember the radio reports, the TV pictures and the photos, but no one remembers what was written about it. It’s true, isn’t it? I think a still image is fantastic.”
Don’t tell him, but he may have a point. Years after the last rugby writer has penned his final, breathless paragraph, people will still retain the images of Jonny Wilkinson’s drop goal or a mud‑covered Fran Cotton (taken by the late Colin “Big C” Elsey) in their mind’s eye. Rogers grew up in the Black Country supporting Wolverhampton but he has done more to spread rugby’s gospel than most.
Now 63, the snapper’s snapper is about to chalk up 40 years of chronicling the sport. His first Five Nations game was Ireland versus Scotland on 2 February 1980; that summer he covered the Lions in South Africa, which remains his all-time favourite tour. In those days players and press drank together and shared the same hotels. Which is how the debutant tourist Rogers, lying on what he thought was his own bed, first met the Welsh centre Dai Richards, whose room he was in. “I remember him saying: ‘What are you doing in here?’ It turned out they’d mixed up Dai Richards and Dave Rogers at reception.”
In those distant days touring players and snappers would even attend church together on Sundays – “Ned Van Esbeck of the Irish Times would round us all up like a sheepdog” – and lifelong friendships were forged. “You’d be best mates with people like Bill Beaumont, Peter Wheeler, Rory and Tony Underwood, Ieuan Evans ... loads of them. The players don’t enjoy themselves as much as they used to because they can’t. In the old days things would happen that would never be reported. These days someone in a bar will put it on social media instantly.”
As countless former players will testify, however, there are few more trusted witnesses than Rogers. Few over the years have been able to resist the easy charm of the boy from Brierley Hill, not least Diego Maradona, whom he met when England toured Argentina in 1981. “I remember my boss, Bob Thomas, saying: ‘There’s this new up-and‑coming footballer. He’s the best player I’ve seen in years.’”
Off trotted Rogers to Boca Juniors, with the Daily Express’s Tony Bodley acting as his bag carrier and the rest is sepia-tinted history. Later that year a handwritten Christmas card from Maradona arrived in the post. “It wouldn’t happen now, would it? I kept it for five years until I got back from the 1986 World Cup and ripped it up in a fit of pique after the Hand of God incident. I wish I’d bloody kept it now.”
Rogers has met pretty much all the greats since the fateful day he gave up his job – “I lasted a week” – as a trainee accountant. He has seen 36 England captains and his memories are sharper than some of his faded old pictures.
“My favourite photo? Jonny Wilkinson’s drop goal in 2003, because of what it means as an Englishman. The coldest I’ve ever been? The first Lions Test in New Zealand in 2005. I was shivering but managed to take a picture of a freezing Jonny, shot at 1/60th of a second, with long streaks of rain coming down around him. There were three or four Scots guys there wearing kilts but no shirts. They must have nearly died of exposure.”
How come he has lasted so long? Across the cafe table his Getty colleague Stu Forster has a simple explanation. “I see plenty of older photographers and not one of them has the same enthusiasm as Dave.”
In a job their fellow snapper Clive Rose reckons is “80% about dealing with disappointment”‚ he remains a beacon of positivity. “If you haven’t got enthusiasm you might as well pack it in,” says Rogers, sipping reflectively on his cup of tea. “I love it but I still get very nervous before big games. If you haven’t got that you’re in danger of getting blase. I’m not the best snapper in the world but I think I know what’s needed. I don’t always get it, mind.”
One example was the day Erica Roe ran topless on to the Twickenham pitch during half-time in the England v Australia Test in January 1982. “In those days you had pocketfuls of film and you always used half-time to reload. All hell was breaking out behind me and I missed it all.”
His defining picture of a deliriously happy Jeremy Guscott hugging his coach, Ian McGeechan, after the Lions’ series-clinching win in South Africa in 1997, on the other hand, was the direct result of his friendship with the players. “They get to trust you. It’s all about trust and, in my view, if you renege on that deal you’ll never get it back.”
