Originally Posted by kobashi100:
“I genuinely believe that Lancaster and Farrell made him believe that his world cup place was bang on guaranteed. He would have never left Sydney if he would have been told the WC was too early for him.
He isn't gonna wait another 4 years playing a sport he doesn't enjoy anywhere near as much as rugby league.
It's easy to say he is a quitter but why stay when your his heart isnt in it.
Sam never had the desire to be a rugby union great. He simply switched codes to play in the WC.”
It was always a case of "Me, me, me" with the ill-fated-from-the-outset move of Sam Burgess across the codes. As you say, he didn't really want to play Union, he simply wanted to take part in a rugby world cup that has a high global profile..... that people have actually heard of.
He exploited the union code cynically for his own ends and now he's scuttled back to League, which he's good at, and hopefully he'll never be seen anywhere near the Union game ever again. Good riddance, I say.
OK.... Sam Burgess didn't lose the RWC for England, but he was instrumental in disrupting what team cohesion there was (and given Lancaster's inability to select the same team twice, it wasn't much). Luther Burrell could not possibly have done a worse job at RWC than Burgess but was discarded without another thought. What sort of message did that send out to the rest of the team..? What did that do for morale when they saw somebody who has worked hard for the last year to become an integral part of the team, disposed of the make way for a cherry picking interloper..?
I said from the very first that Burgess would slope off back to League after RWC. I take no pleasure in having been proved right.
Some people argue that Burgess simply wasn't ready for the world cup and none of the debacle was any of his fault. Hey, he sought out a place in England RU team of his own volition. I agree that he wasn't ready, but he never was going to be with the short amount of time he had from crossing codes to the start of RWC. He must surely have known that would be the case but still he pursued his aims.
I would argue that making a meaningful contribution was never really a part of his agenda. It was all about his own personal interests. He thought he could ride on the coat tails of the team and just "muck in" in a code he probably thinks is inferior to league (it isn't), it would all be easy and he'd come out of it looking good...... possibly with a nice shiny winners medal to show off into the bargain.
Stuart Lancaster must be sacked. He may be a good coach but he is not a manager. I suspect that he is too easily influenced in his team selection by Andy Farrell and his credibility as any sort of leader is shot to ribbons. I'd also send Andy Farrell packing too, thank his son for his services to England and advise him to concentrate on his club career in the future and I would then restore George Ford in the hope that his trust in the selection process can be rebuilt from the abysmal decision to play Farrell ahead of him during the World Cup.
And that would just be the start.