Farm-boy Burgess is ready to bring home the bacon
ENGLAND prop Tom Burgess is as happy as a pig in mud – and he should know giving his farming antics.
The hulking South Sydney prop hopes to bring home the bacon in tomorrow’s World Cup quarter-final against Papua New Guinea.
He has been spending time on TV star Kelvin Fletcher’s farm in between international duties.
Burgess is big mates with the ex-Emmerdale actor and Strictly Come Dancing winner, who has swapped acting and dancing to run a Peak District farm.
Fletcher, below, and his family feature on the BBC show Kelvin’s Big Farming Adventure.
Burgess, 30, who has been happy to muck in, said: “It’s going well for Kelvin.
“I’ve been down recently and on a Sunday it’s going to be my farm day.
“Every Sunday after a game, it’s going to be a bit of active recovery.
“I’ll go to the farm and chase a few sheep around, get on the pigs and feed them. It’s good for the soul.
“Pigs and rugby league players are pretty similar to deal with, to be fair.
“There’s a few in our team that are like pigs – Victor Radley and Elliott Whitehead.
“But that’s a compliment for Victor as he loves them – he’s got a tattoo of a pig on his calf.”
Burgess, Radley and Whitehead will bring the grunt in England’s pack as they bid to make the Kumuls squeal in Wigan and avoid a shock exit. “I played for Great Britain against PNG in 2019 in Port Moresby, so we know what they’re going to bring,” Burgess said, after the Lions were stunned 28-10.
“They’ll keep coming all day.We were ahead in that game for a while but they rolled us.”
Burgess scored twice in Saturday’s 94-4 rout of Greece and the towering front row admits he was keen to grab an unlikely treble.
He said: “I don’t want to look like I’m sniffing for tries. But I’ll be honest, I was. It would’ve been pretty cool to get a hat-trick, even though it’s not my job to score tries.
“When it was 10-4 after 20 minutes, I thought, ‘We’re going to have to get running hard again here’.
“That’s what I tried to do when I came back on.That’s what we needed to get back to.”
England head coach Shaun Wane has left out record try-scorer Ryan Hall and Canterbury prop Luke Thompson from his 19-man squad, but Kai Pearce-Paul retains his place after his debut against Greece.
Sam Tomkins, Kallum Watkins, Whitehead, Herbie Farnworth and Michael McIlorum all return after sitting out last weekend. ENGLAND (squad): Tomkins, Makinson, Watkins, Farnworth, Welsby, Williams, Burgess, McIlorum, Whitehead, Bateman, Radley, Young, Knowles, Lees, Cooper, Hill, McMeeken, Sneyd, Pearce-Paul.