On London’s South Bank, a short walk along from the Founders Arms pub, is a spot where a certain street hustler used to hang out. He didn’t use cards, or balls and cups, but a bicycle, and a little plastic ramp, no more than a metre square, with a six-inch slope on either side. All you had to do, he would explain to the people passing by, was ride the bike up and down the ramp without letting your feet touch the ground. Two pounds a go, and twenty quid to anyone who could do it. Sounds easy. Only the bike’s steering had been reversed. Turn the handlebars left, and it swung right, and vice versa. Which is why his £20 always stayed tucked in his pocket.
Point being, the most familiar-looking things can be the hardest to master if they’re only a little different from what you’re used to. And so to Sam Burgess, a Clive Churchill medal winner for his man-of-the-match performance in the NRL’s Grand Final, the first-ever British winner of the Rugby League International Federation’s player of the year award, and the man who will start at inside-centre in Saturday’s match, the most important England’s rugby union team have played since their quarter‑final against France in the 2011 World Cup. Lining up against him, Jamie Roberts, 70 caps for Wales, and three more over the course of two tours with the British & Irish Lions.
A lot of good players have tried to make this same move, from a range of positions in league to the centres in union. Not many have pulled it off. It was only two years ago that Joel Tomkins was playing at 13 for Lancaster, after nine years with the Wigan Warriors. Before him, there was Shontayne Hape, who had five years with Bradford Bulls and then won 13 caps for England when Martin Johnson was in charge. Then there was Andy Farrell, whose switch was soundtracked by a similar fanfare to the one that has rung around Burgess these last few months. But Farrell’s knees had gone. He played eight games for England, the last of them in the group stages of the 2007 World Cup, the team’s lowest ebb.
Soon after Farrell switched, Chev Walker moved from Leeds Rhinos to play at Bath, in a move part-funded by the RFU. Walker played all of eight Premiership games, then moved back north again to play for Hull KR. And before them all there was Henry Paul, one of the great stand-offs, whose union career with England ran to six games in 2002 and 2004 and ended with one of the more abject performances in recent memory. One of the few who has looked like making it work is Kyle Eastmond, who moved to Bath after four years with St Helens. And he was one of the players, along with Luther Burrell and Billy Twelvetrees, edged out by Burgess when Lancaster named his squad for the World Cup.
It’s one thing being out on the wing, where Chris Ashton and Jason Robinson both thrived, another altogether in the centre, in the thick throughout. Some have done it. Like Sonny Bill Williams, the extraordinary All Black. But the crowd at Twickenham have seen many more try and fail. Not because they were bad players, far from it – Farrell and Paul were among the best ever to play in Super League – but because the gap between the two codes has grown so large since they first split apart at the end of the 19th century.
Tomkins summed it up well in his recent remarks to the Guardian. “It’s the transition of trying to make an impact on the game, that’s the most difficult thing,” he said. “In rugby union you can’t just go looking for the ball, you have to stay within the system and take your chances when they come along. In rugby league, if you’re feeling fresh and you haven’t touched the ball for a while you can go looking for the ball. In union if you go and look for the ball you’ll be out of position and you can be at fault.”
Then there are the “dark arts”, as Tomkins calls them. “When you are tackled in league your instinct is to reload and get ready for the next play but in union when someone gets tackled that’s just the start of it. Then you’ve got to instinctively get involved in the ruck and clear over for the ball. That’s a massive difference.” Tomkins says that he would often find himself sticking his head in a ruck only to realise he “didn’t have a clue what was going on”.
In league, Tomkins says, everything was instinctive, based on an understanding honed over years of play. Whereas “in union, I was thinking for the whole game and I was exhausted afterwards because you constantly question yourself: ‘Am I doing the right thing?’”
A little like riding a bike when the steering has been flipped. Burgess played his very first game for Bath nine months ago, and in all, excluding the odd match he has had for their reserve team, this will be only the fifth game he has started at inside-centre. He has the size, skill, and power to beat back Roberts but he is desperately inexperienced. If he can hold his own it will be an extraordinary achievement, and if he slips up, well, there’s a lot more than £20 at stake.
