Eleven days before Stuart Lancaster announces his squad for the Six Nations, Sam Burgess, Bath’s expensive signing from rugby league, finally showed what the fuss and the spending is all about. Six games in, he suddenly seems at ease in his new career.
As his head coach at Bath, Mike Ford, made clear later, Burgess is still very much a work in progress and if an immediate England place is fanciful, playing a part when the second-string Saxons take on Ireland Wolfhounds seven days before the Six Nations begins is suddenly the realistic option Lancaster imagined when Burgess played his first union game six weeks ago.
“Sam played his best game and he is definitely on the right track,” said Ford before the England lock Dave Attwood suggested that the 26-year-old’s rugby education might benefit from time at England’s Test base in Surrey.
“He’s the kind of player who would benefit from that environment,” said Attwood after being at the heart of the huge forward effort which set up Burgess’s first Premiership try – the third of five from Bath. “He’s picking it up very quickly, but he’s a talented bloke.
“You saw today what he can do. He’s a massive specimen, really physical, and he’s got a really varied skill-set. He adds a very different dimension to what we can do in the midfield. Every game he is growing in stature and bringing more and more of his kind of game to the party, which is ultimately what we want.
“We want more of Sam Burgess out there. He is comfortable and asserting himself. He made a couple of game-changing tackles, some great carries and capped it off with a nice try. For someone who people argue doesn’t know the rules of the game, man of the match in almost a 40-point win, we are not struggling too much.”
Before that try Burgess had been a thorn in Wasps’ side for 45 minutes, bursting through tackles and flattening anyone in his path. Twice in a minute the man playing opposite, Ben Jacobs, felt the weight of his 18st, 6ft 5in frame.
Playing inside centre – Lancaster’s problem position – alongside Jonathan Joseph, another man with Test hopes, and outside the England fly-half George Ford, the midfield and match of styles kept Wasps on the hop, Burgess doing more in his first 10 minutes than his combined previous experience.
If Attwood urges caution over England – “Let’s walk before we can run. A few more man of the matches would be great” – there is no doubt that Burgess is beginning to impress. “He is an ultimate professional, he is in great shape, he looks after himself, he helps drive standards and move people forward off the field as well as on it.”
As for the man himself, after being denied a try at Leicester last week, he was pleased “to get the monkey off my back”, and generally happy about his progress. “I am improving week to week, and enjoying a bit more time on the field,” said Burgess. “Overall, I am happy with the way things are going. This game wasn’t as slow as last week – I touched the ball once in the first half at Leicester – so it suited me and the whole team.”
The frustration for Lancaster is that while Burgess is available but short on experience, Nathan Hughes, the No8 who has seamlessly replaced Billy Vunipola in Wasps’ ranks, will not be available for more than a year.
After being signed from Auckland, the 23-year-old qualifies on residency in March 2016, but on Saturday might easily have wrested the man of the match award from Burgess, scoring a try of his own and making one for another player who could play for Samoa in this year’s World Cup, Alapati Leiua.
It was Hughes’s perfect line, spotted by Jacobs, which sliced Bath open during a first half in which Bath were almost embarrassingly superior to a side who started the day fourth in the Premiership.
Fifteen points down at half-time and behind 27‑5 after Ford found Burgess in space and only five metres out, Hughes’s try sparked a remarkable Wasps turnaround that culminated in tries for Jacobs and the replacement fly-half Sam Lozowski within a minute and a bonus point.
It might have been more but Matt Banahan had already brushed Joe Simpson aside and Ollie Devoto had added a fifth during a brief spell on the pitch.
Bath Watson (Devoto 48; Stringer, 71); Rokoduguni (Woodburn, 34), Joseph, Burgess, Banahan; Ford, Cook; Auterac (James, 54), Batty (Webber, 54), Thomas (Wilson, 54), Hooper (capt; Day, 59), Attwood, Garvey, Louw (Fearns 52), Houston
Tries Louw, Rokoduguni, Burgess, Banahan, Devoto. Cons Ford 4. Pens Ford 2
Wasps Miller; Wade (Daly, 47), Leiua, Jacobs, J Bassett; Goode (Lozowski, 63), Simpson (Davies, 63); Mullan (McIntyre, 60), Festuccia (Shevington, 50), Cittadini (Swainston, 60), Davies, Myall (Gaskell, 60), Jones (Johnson, 11), Haskell (capt), Hughes.
Tries Leiua, Hughes, Jacobs, Lazowski. Cons Goode , Lozowski 2.
Referee Andrew Small. Att: 13,350.
