Dusty Rogers and Travis Cohalan will co-coach Charles Sturt University in season 2023

Cohalan has been talked into a third year in charge of the Bushpigs but will do so alongside Rogers in a co-coaching partnership.

Rogers, 29, enjoyed his first season at CSU this year but arrived with playing and coaching experience at Collingullie-Glenfield Park, Henty and Mangoplah-Cookardinia United-Eastlakes.

He is looking forward to taking on his first senior coaching gig.

"It's always been an interest of mine to look at it one day," Rogers said.

"When I went to Henty it was probably a little bit too early to do that but I've done the 17s (at Collingullie) and worked with Trav previously at Mango, playing under him, and he did float the idea as part of the initial conversations (to come to CSU).

"He said that this year was going to be his last year, but he's decided to stay on, but we thought the natural progression of it was having Trav involved.

"It was a must-have with what's he's built with the young guys and I guess it's the most obvious way we saw of the natural progression going forward and what happens after this we'll wait and see."

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Rogers did three years of coaching Collingullie-GP's under 17s, while he spent the 2017 season as assistant coach at Henty.

"I prefer the younger demographic as well with the 17s and now this uni club. It's a lot easier to manage younger guys that haven't had experience yet," he said.

"With Trav still being involved, he's had two years of doing his style, his training drills so I just think some fresh drills, I've obviously been at different clubs, been coached by different people so I've got a few different ideas and some different training drills.

"It's about keeping it fresh and interesting for the young guys out there, as well as hopefully being able to impart some sort of knowledge that I may have onto them."

CSU returned to finals this year for the first time since 2018. They highlighted their potential with wins over North Wagga and The Rock-Yerong Creek in the final two rounds to make the top five.

Rogers believes the Bushpigs list has serious potential.

"Absolutely. The upside there is massive," he said.

"I think at this stage we're only going to lose three players from our first grade team and hopefully, you never know, a few uni students might pop up that are going to be absolute superstars.

"The old cliche, whatever we get is icing the cake. We've kept the core, we've kept almost the whole team, which for out there, is a bit of a difference because there is always a high turnover.

"It will be the third year of Trav's systems, my views are very much the same, so it will be the third year of the game style, the third year of playing with each other and hopefully it starts to gel.

"We had some good mature moments this year, and we still had some very immature moments this year in the same token so hopefully we can all as a unit and a group take a step forward and, for lack of a better term, learn how to win."

Cohalan revealed it was an approach from the playing group that led to him going again in 2023.

"I actually just really love the blokes in the playing group and the club," he said.

"We started this journey at the start of last year, well late 2020 and we had no footy due to COVID, and we had 19 new players from the last team that had played for CSU so I see it as we've come a long way in two years together and it's a credit to the boys and the fact they dig in, listen, want to learn and they do the hard work.

"Halfway through the year some of the boys came to me and wanted me to hang around. I scouted the group, had a chat to them because the last thing I wanted to do was outstay my welcome or coach again if the boys didn't want me on board but they all said they wanted me to go again. I was pretty happy to stick with them.

"I think the average age is around 20-21, a lot of the boys would have played their first ever senior final against North Wagga so they'll learn from that and I really think we're building something special at the club, in terms of what's going on there, so I think there's a lot of upside.

"To be able to bring Dusty on board as well, he's someone who I have coached at Mango and now at CSU, he's a really passionate football person, he's great with one-on-one developing with the younger players and he wants to get into senior coaching, he's a really good fella as well so to be able to assist him to get his first taste of senior coaching, I'm really excited by that opportunity as well."

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