Sam Burgess' admission of guilt over rugby union experience

Ten years have passed since Sam Burgess made his rugby union debut for Bath yet debate over whether his cross-code move was a hit or a miss lingers on.

When interviewed, Burgess is nearly always asked about his time in the 15-man code, especially when the merits of each sport are being debated, as was the case on an episode of The Sports Agents podcast hosted by Gabby Logan and Mark Chapman.

Burgess alternated between a crash ball inside centre and blindside flanker as he tried to make a big impact in what was ultimately an alien sport.

He gave a good enough fist of it to controversially make England’s 2015 World Cup squad but in terms of its longevity, the move fell short of expectations.

Some of the nuts and bolts of union remain a mystery to him to this day; Burgess even gets his rucks mixed up with his mauls in explaining one occasion when he felt a fraud.

“I remember scoring a try on the back of a ruck (sic) at Bath, I was plus-one at a lineout and I caught the ball and I’m at the back of the ruck. I pushed this way, I was doing nothing, and then I fell over the try line and I felt guilty that I took five points for that. Everyone was like: ‘Well done, Sam, good try’. But I did nothing, ” he explained.

The try in question came in a man-of-the-match performance in a 43-18 win over London Irish in April 2015, which went a long way to securing Bath a place in the play-offs and his place in the World Cup squad.

But despite playing at the highest level, Burgess admits he was learning a new game “from the ground up”.

“You’re completely learning a new game. There are transferable skills but not as many as you’d imagine. The contact height is different, it even was back then,” he said.

“In league, in 2014/15, it was brutal, and then I came to union and the contact heights were a lot lower so I had to change my approach to contact. There was a lot to learn about the breakdown, the rucks, the lineouts … I didn’t even try learning them – you have to be an absolute mathematician to figure out what is going on there and sometimes I don’t think they even know what is going on.

“But it was actually a really good experience to learn a whole new game from the ground up. I was playing reserve grade on the Monday night and the first team on a Saturday afternoon, so I was getting plenty of practice.”

The October episode of The Sports Agents focused on whether there could ever be a hybrid form of rugby, and Burgess was firmly in the ‘no’ camp.

“I just don’t think there’ll ever be a combining of the two sports, purely because of purists on either side of the global picture,” he said.

“I just think it’ll create a bit of a mess.”