{"id":64174,"date":"2025-08-13T14:36:12","date_gmt":"2025-08-13T14:36:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/64174\/"},"modified":"2025-08-13T14:36:12","modified_gmt":"2025-08-13T14:36:12","slug":"the-politics-that-forced-sam-burgess-to-end-dream-of-captaining-england","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/64174\/","title":{"rendered":"The ‘politics’ that forced Sam Burgess to end dream of captaining England"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Sam Burgess believes that politics cost him his dream to captain England<\/a> and forced his return to rugby league.<\/p>\n

The 36-year-old remains one of the most famous code-hoppers of all time, leaving rugby league following the 2014 NRL Grand Final victory with the South Sydney Rabbitohs, in which he was named man of the match, only to return a year later following England\u2019s ill-fated campaign in the rugby union World Cup.<\/p>\n

Burgess, who now coaches Warrington Wolves in the Super League, remains one of the greatest \u2018what ifs\u2019 in rugby union, but he recently outlined how he thinks his career would have panned out had he not returned to Australia.<\/p>\n

Joining the\u00a0Stick to Cricket <\/a>podcast recently, the former England rugby league captain has explained how he believes he would have had a \u201csuccessful career in rugby union.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

England <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Australia <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\u201cI played at the highest level, I played for England,\u201d the NRL hall of famer said. \u201cI felt my contribution to the country was good. I believe if I continued to play rugby union, I\u2019d have gone on to play for England numerous times, I would have had the ambition to lead my country and captain my country, and that was a thought I had post World Cup.\u201d<\/p>\n

However, the former Bath<\/a> star confessed that he did not have the right motivation to remain in the 15-man code.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy motivation was to prove people wrong, and it\u2019s not the way I work, I do it for my own satisfaction,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI wouldn\u2019t have been doing it for the right reasons. I would have definitely had a successful career in rugby union, I believe, had I spent more time there.<\/p>\n

\u201cI had a great time. I played in the Premiership final for Bath. I played for England and we fell out of that tournament in quite dramatic fashion and then at the end of the day I ended up going back to Australia.<\/p>\n

\u201cI just didn\u2019t like a lot of the politics in the game, it\u2019s not who I was, and I didn\u2019t feel I was playing there for the reasons that I wanted to be there. I was doing it for other people. So I went back to rugby league, which, at heart, is what I am, a rugby league player.\u201d<\/p>\n

Having played the bulk of his time with Bath in the back-row, Burgess was deployed as a centre by Stuart Lancaster for England. He returned to league having never fully settled on a position, but believes he would have ended up a flanker had he continued his career in union.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sam Burgess believes that politics cost him his dream to captain England and forced his return to rugby…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":64175,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[5903,101,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-64174","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-rugby","8":"tag-rugby","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64174","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=64174"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64174\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/64175"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64174"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64174"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=64174"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}