Hey all, new to the forum. England and Bath supporter, I also play for a club in West London, preferably centre but in true amateur rugby fashion I've played anywhere with double figures on the back.
As a Bath supporter, obviously I'm very excited about Sam Burgess's arrival but I do worry that there's a LOT of hype over someone who has never played the game. He's being touted by some (mainly journalists, but still) as the answer to England's midfield problem, yet he has - to repeat - never played the game, and is as likely if not more so to end up playing back row.
On the question of best position, I have always been in the "league converts don't usually make good forwards" camp, for all the obvious reasons of learning to ruck, maul, scrummage and all that jazz. This was until I read Ford categorically stating he intended for Burgess to be a back row player, and heard his reasoning which madkes a hell of a lot of sense. He referred to Burgess as a "sixty plays per game" player, i.e. someone who has sixty direct moments of involvement - basically tackles or carries I assume. He pointed out that the average premiership centre has twelve per game (I think ... doing this from memory) and a back row far closer to Sam's current sixty. I don't follow league so all I know about Burgess's talents is second-hand and I am happy to be corrected by more knowledgeable posters, but there seems to be a consensus in the coverage that Sam's biggest assets, outside his pure power, are his high fitness and enormous work rate. So Ford has a point - if what makes Burgess such a good league player is his high work rate and ability to make his sixtieth carry as powerful as his first, it seems madness to waste it.
There remains the problem of scrummaging, clearing out, jackalling etc. and no-one can deny that's an issue, but I think at the very least the basic stuff can be learnt, to a reasonable level, by a determined individual with an intelligent sporting brain - which I'm sure Burgess is. And the more complicated stuff like jackalling can be left to other players in a balanced back row unit. There's no guarantee he'll be international class, but his best hope of being so is as a formidable ball carrier and tackler round the fringes - I don't know what his hands are like, but I imagine he must have an offloading game which is pretty good by union standards in order to be such a good league player? If he's got even a half decent pass and ability to make a pass-run decision then he sounds like a top class number 8 for Bath (although saying that, I think at present we're scouring the under 15s for back row players, so ... ) and possibly England, but it is far too early to be talking about England at this point. He might well be a dual-code legend, but he might be Joel Tomkins, he might even learn to play union to the exceptionally high standard he apparently plays league, but he won't do it in a few months, and I am quite sure he won't play in the World Cup next year.