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Woodward: Burgess switch all-time low for England
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Sam Burgess’ much-criticized switch to rugby union is over. Just weeks after his underwhelming appearances for England at the Rugby World Cup, Burgess has switched back to rugby league to return to the South Sydney Rabbitohs.
Burgess signed a three-year contract to the end of the 2018 season, the National Rugby League club said yesterday.
Hours earlier, Burgess said he would leave Bath in the English Premiership after being released from that three-year contract with two years remaining.
Burgess’ premature return to league makes him one of the biggest cross-code flops ever, but Rugby World Cup-winning coach Clive Woodward believed he wasn’t to blame.
“With his return to rugby league, we’ve reached one of the all-time lows and most embarrassing points in English rugby history,” Woodward wrote in the Daily Mail yesterday.
Woodward, coach of the 2003 world champion England side, blamed the English Rugby Football Union for choosing Stuart Lancaster, who didn’t have enough experience to be the national coach, then not surrounding him with enough coaching expertise.
“The RFU has spent the last four years congratulating itself on the direction in which we’re heading, but the truth is we have marched confidently into a total mess,” Woodward wrote. “We are the laughingstock of not only world rugby but also sport and business. The rest of the world says those involved in English rugby are arrogant. I hate this reputation, but that is exactly what the RFU have been.”
Burgess was a member of the England squad that became the first RWC host to fail to advance past the pool stage, and Lancaster was criticized for rushing Burgess into the test side, and making him a center after playing for Bath as a forward.
Burgess, who won the first of his five England caps in a RWC warmup in August, made three appearances during the RWC, but only one start.
Just over a year ago, Burgess bowed out of the NRL by helping South Sydney end a 43-year title drought, and was named the most valuable player of the grand final. Weeks later, he changed codes, playing his first match for Bath in late November.
Burgess will be reunited with his brothers George and Thomas at the Rabbitohs in 2016. His older brother, Luke, and mother Julie, also live in Sydney.
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