Andrew lays blame for Burgess ‘blunder’ at Lancaster’s door
EX-ENGLAND head coach Stuart Lancaster made an “almighty blunder” selecting Sam Burgess for the 2015 World Cup, according to the Rugby Football Union’s former of director of professional rugby Rob Andrew.
Dewsbury-born Burgess became the scapegoat for England’s World Cup failure two years ago after he was fasttracked into the squad following a much-hyped switch from rugby league.
Former Leeds Carnegie director of rugby Lancaster has since said he would not have selected Burgess if he had known he would return to rugby league within a few weeks of England’s World Cup exit at the pool stage, following defeats to Wales and Australia.
Bath agreed a deal to release Burgess from the final two years of his three-year contract in November 2015 and he rejoined South Sydney Rabbitohs after just a season in rugby union.
Failure to get out of the group cost Lancaster his job and Andrew has pinpointed the problems.
In a section from his book, The Game of My Life: Battling for England in the Professional Era, Andrew wrote: “If there was a problem team-wise in the run-up to the 2015 World Cup, a selectorial Achilles’ heel, it was to be found in midfield.
“Try as he might, Stuart Lancaster could not settle on an optimum configuration. Which is where Sam Burgess came in, and where things went horribly wrong.
“I would not even begin to pin the blame for our embarrassing World Cup misfire on a single player, but the kerfuffle around the introduction of Burgess was undeniably the tipping point.
“To this day, I simply do not understand the thinking behind the fast-tracking of a player from international rugby league to international rugby union when so many of the things that had made him wildly successful in the 13-man game were of questionable relevance in the 15man version.
“It was an almighty risk to select him in a World Cup squad on such extremely limited and highly questionable evidence and it proved to be an almighty blunder.
“Why did Stuart do it? He alone knows the truth of the matter. But all head coaches are control freaks in their own ways, especially around the matches and tournaments they know will define them, and Stuart became pretty dictatorial in the way he ran the show in 2015.”
Andrew, who resigned from the RFU in April last year, also questioned the overall selection policy and said the World Cup exit was a “slow-motion car crash” following a build-up which lacked clarity and focus.
In an interview in April, 2016, Lancaster admitted it was a mistake to fast-track Burgess into the squad.
“Clearly, hindsight is a wonderful thing,” said Lancaster. “If I’d known he was going to go back to rugby league then my decisions would have been different, but we didn’t know that at the time. It’s a shame for everyone. I don’t think there was any winner in the end. Sam was a great and positive influence on the group. He worked hard and earned the right, in our minds, to be in the squad.”