Last year’s best-and-fairest, Rogers is in a brace for a month after injuring the knee in the second quarter of last week’s loss to East Wagga-Kooringal.

“Fingers crossed he’ll be right after six weeks but that’s going to depend on recovery,” Jets coach Mitch Robinson said. 

“It’s not ideal to start the season, but it’s one of them things. He’s a bit gutted. He hadn’t missed a training. His leadership has gone up too – he’s our vice-captain this year too.”

Rogers is also going to miss this year’s big representative fixture against the Riverina League, after he was best on ground in the Farrer League rep side’s win last year. 

The Jets have the bye this week and, given they get another week off for the rep game in a month, Robinson said the timing of the injury is a minor positive, in ensuring he’ll miss fewer games.

It’s deja vu for the Jets, who lost midfielder Mitch Haddrill to a knee injury in round one last year. He came back and claimed the league medal. 

In good news for the Jets, Josh Avis, Jacob Bell and Brad McKinnon are all set to be available for their next game, against Barellan.

Robinson will be looking for significant improvement on the loss to EWK.

“We were pretty ordinary. We were very disappointed in that first half,” Robinson said. “We’re trying to play a similar game to last year but it takes a while for guys to get used to playing together.

“East Wagga played really well, they used the footy real really well. We turned it over too much and our tackling pressure was a bit ordinary. We addressed that at half-time, and come out and kicked 4 goals against the wind in the third quarter, but we probably only played a quarter of footy, all-up.”

Danny Benger also injured a shoulder but is hoping to be right for the Barellan game.