Sam Burgess is ready, willing and able to make his England Saxons debut

http://www.theguardian.com/sport/2015/jan/29/sam-burgess-england-saxons-debut

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The last time Sam Burgess wore the white of England he produced a display so colossal it shook Wembley to its foundations. In the end his rugby league valediction finished with the cruellest of defeats in the World Cup semi-final but Burgess, preparing to pull on a national shirt once again, now remembers why he was so determined to make the tough transition to union.

“Certainly I did have England on my mind,” he says when discussing his decision to switch codes. “I was actually in England at the time, watching the autumn internationals during the rugby league World Cup, so that excited me. Opportunities to sing the anthem are few and far between. It’s great having goals to set to try to achieve but this is a first step this weekend.”

Fourteen months after that heart-breaking 20-18 defeat to New Zealand at Wembley, Burgess will become an England player in a different sport when he makes his debut for the Saxons on Friday night, a much-anticipated elevation to the international second string for a match against Ireland Wolfhounds in Cork. It follows a progressive few months with Bath but a period in which he has made just eight appearances for the club.

Nothing, though, seems to faze a 26-year-old who has already conquered the NRL and could yet prove a key piece in Stuart Lancaster’s jigsaw for the World Cup. Given England’s desperate injury situation for the Six Nations some have even suggested Burgess could be fast-tracked to the full squad but such talk appears premature.

Jon Callard, the England Saxons coach, spoke about his impressions of Burgess this week and the response was emphatic. His talent, said Callard, was unquestionable and his character impressive. Burgess has thrown himself back into the international sphere, consuming all information available at Saxons’ Teddington training base where he has been a keen participant in team meetings.

It is a trait that has stood him in good stead at Bath, where Burgess has been eased into the first team and scored his first Premiership try for the club against Wasps earlier in the month. The attention has been intense; every move and touch analysed, every game carrying that extra little bit of interest, but he is progressing as well as can be expected ahead of his Saxons bow.

“It’s going to be an exciting few days and hopefully we get some good friendships and some good partnerships on the field on Friday night,” said Burgess before the trip to Ireland. “We’ve got limited time, which is challenging but it’s something we can look at as a positive too. I’m not so nervous, it’s more exciting than anything. Playing in the Premiership every week is a great challenge, so I think this will be as good, if not better. So I’m looking forward to that. It will be a good test to see where I’m at and the team as well.

“A lot of people are asking me things that are happening down the track, that I obviously can’t control. I’ve just got to take it week by week; it’s a mentality I’ve used all last year, just to play it game by game.”

Much has been made of Burgess’ switch to union, given his stature as a versatile man-mountain who is honing his skills at centre and could eventually move to flanker. He is steadily adapting, studying the game on TV – “I spend a lot of time with George Ford and that’s all he watches so I don’t have much choice” – while getting to grips with the technical aspects of the maul and breakdown.

However, there remains a close bond with league. Burgess still gets regular calls from friends and former team-mates asking why he has only been able to carry the ball 15 metres during a game, light-hearted ribbing that has been a tradition for those league players down the years who have been bold enough to depart. “The boys are calling me, I’ll tell you that,” he says. “The boys are ringing me and giving me some stick, it’s quite funny. We played against Leicester and a stat must have come up on the TV that I made 15 metres in the whole game or something. You’d try to make that in one carry in league, so the boys were giving me stick saying that I’m getting lazy.

“From being a league player, the perception of union, from the league side of things, is that it’s a bit easier than league, that you don’t have to be as fit. It’s quite a strong statement that and you don’t really understand what this is like until you come and play the game, how intense rugby union is in certain aspects.

“The game’s a lot tougher than I think it’s viewed from the outside. Personally I’ve got a lot more respect for the guys in different roles on the field. The ball in union is not in play as long as it is in league but while it is in play you are moving a lot more; the metres per minute while the ball’s in play are a lot higher than what you would find in league.

“As a neutral you just sometimes watch the flair that scores the tries but what actually happens to create that, it looks quite messy at times, in those mauls and things, but it’s actually very skilful. There was one first-team game where there was a maul that was going over the tryline and I ran into it. I don’t think anyone knows what’s going on sometimes.”

Burgess will start the game on Friday evening and he is proud to wear the national jersey again, the next step on his latest road to England prominence. “I just wanted a test and a challenge,” he says. “This will be the biggest one I have had so far.”