‘Title glory with my boyhood heroes would be mission complete’
It has been a long road but Freddie Burns has finally come back home to Bath, as he tells Daniel Schofield
As an eight-year-old, Freddie Burns used to sneak over the fence when the security guards had their backs turned to watch Bath at the Rec. Today, the one-time Peter Pan of English rugby runs out for his boyhood club for the first time all grown up.
It has been a curious route home. Feted and then ostracised at Gloucester, sacrificed by Leicester for the return of prodigal son George Ford and abandoned by England, the fly-half has received a fair few scars, although he wears them lightly. He remains ebullient rather than embittered, although the manner of his departure from Tigers clearly still stings.
“It was tough. It was a long, drawnout process for everyone, including me,” Burns said. “I probably heard about the rumours [of Ford going to Leicester] last June and that was like playing under a cloud. It is hard to concentrate on playing when people are coming up to you saying, ‘You’re going to get shipped out’. I just tried to crack on but everything has worked itself out and I couldn’t be more excited about representing the club I supported as a boy.”
The fixture list’s mischievous sense of humour has pitted Bath away to Leicester today. After completing a mandatory three-month sit-down period for sustaining three concussions last season, Burns starts on the bench against his former club with Rhys Priestland taking the helm at No 10. Ford starts for Leicester in a delicious looking back line featuring Matt Toomua, Manu Tuilagi and Jonny May.
The most important lesson that Burns has learnt from these experiences is just to be himself. For so long described as the next big thing, Burns has tried to adapt his natural flair to please others. He admits he benefited from playing on a tightest of leashes at Leicester, learning how to add control to his large box of tricks. Yet at 27, he no longer wants to be described in terms of potential and growth.
“My development is over,” Burns said. “You always learn stuff as a rugby player and can adapt. There will be certain elements of my game that are going to change as I get to the latter stages of my career. For me now what you see is what you get. You are not going to change me into a different player. I am who I am. For me that was the penny that dropped at Leicester about 18 months in, which led back into some pretty good form.”
There are two other priorities: win some silverware and add to his tally of five England caps. He hopes the first would lead to the latter, but Burns remains realistic about where he ranks in Eddie Jones’s pecking order of flyhalves. The last contact that he had with anyone in the England camp was when Mike Catt informed him he had not made the training squad for the 2015 World Cup. Since then he has not heard a peep. “The form I was in for the majority of last year, and especially the tail-end, meant I was disappointed that I didn’t even get a call to explain where I was sat,” Burns said. “If I was not in the reckoning at all then that’s fine. That’s just the way it is.”
Asked if he would choose more caps or winning the Premiership, Burns