Sam Burgess has admitted he is still struggling with some of the laws of rugby union but says he is beginning to feel more comfortable in the 15-a-side code, despite becoming the first England player sin-binned on his senior international debut.
Burgess was shown a yellow card five minutes before half-time for obstructing Morgan Parra after the French scrum-half took a quick tap penalty and confessed afterwards he was unaware the offence would inevitably cost him 10 minutes off the field. “I didn’t realise it was an automatic sin-binning. It was just a reaction thing,” Burgess said. “There’s a lot of rules, man. I sometimes think that players who have played [union] all their lives don’t know all the rules. Thankfully it didn’t cost us the game. I will be richer for the experience, I guess. I’ll learn and I won’t do it again. I’m not going to lose too much sleep over it.”
England cannot afford to lose players to such avoidable offences at next month’s World Cup but Burgess says he is starting to feel more at home on a union pitch. “I’m feeling so much more comfortable and enjoying it a lot more. When you’re in one sport which you feel you know inside out and then come to another and start all over again, it’s frustrating. I’m not going to lie ... I’ve never hidden that. But I’m sticking with it and am really enjoying the challenge. It’s been a wonderful six-to-eight weeks with England. Hopefully I can keep going. I certainly felt more comfortable than I did in the Saxons game [last January].”
The 26-year-old Burgess must now wait and see if he will receive another chance off the bench in England’s next warm-up game against France in Paris this Saturday. The head coach, Stuart Lancaster, is likely to change almost his entire starting XV, with Brad Barritt and Jonathan Joseph in line to feature together in midfield.
Both Burgess and his fellow debutant Henry Slade, however, felt they had improved their respective hopes of making the final 31-man squad for the tournament. “I wasn’t trying to live up to any expectation that has been put on me,” said Burgess. “I didn’t try to go out and be a different type of player or how I’m described in the papers. I was happy with things ... I just cracked on and did my job as was needed.”
Slade, for his part, earned favourable reviews from, among others, the former England wing Jason Robinson, and said: “I was pretty pleased with how it went for me. I have a few things to iron out but I’m feeling quite confident.”
The captain for the day, Tom Wood, felt both centres had advanced their cause.
“It’s really uplifting when you see someone like Sam smash one of their front-row forwards early on in the game. That’s a massive lift for the team. It was brilliant to see Sladey’s sleight of hand on the national stage, too.”
