[3] Rogers never met his parents,[4] he grew up in an orphanage in Newcastle upon Tyne and in a foster family in County Durham,[3] where he picked up the sport of basketball.
[2] In 1971, as a player-coach he guided the Liverpool Police basketball team to the British national championship title.
Rogers took up a job at Ford Motor Company and as a coach taught the game of basketball to the youth in Toxteth, an inner-city area of Liverpool.
In 1981, he started coaching youngsters at a gym in Tulse Hill, a group which later was described as the “early formations of a Brixton basketball programme“.
[4] As a long-time coach of the Brixton Topcats, Rogers developed numerous teenagers who later entered the professional ranks, including Luol Deng, Eric Boateng, Justin Robinson, Matthew Bryan-Amaning, Andrea Congreaves.