Ferocious Aardvark wrote:...The only people who have been trying to blame Burgess are precisely those anti-league establishment figures, including some former players. The overwhelming opinion from reasonably unbiased people corresponds with the facts, namely that a very green Burgess did nothing wrong against Wales, was one of their better players, and England were winning and defending very well up to the point where he was substituted. Those are all facts.
He will only be seen as" a major reason" by a few strident biased trolls but they are not the writers of history.
There are two very distict groups of people in the RU world commenting on this.
First off are team mates and coaches of Sam. Not withstanding Mike Ford's rather small minded dig, all the comments made by his bath team mates suggest that he was well liked and appreciated in the dressing room. As a rule, modern players at the top level in union don't look down on their RL counterparts, they appreciate that they are hard working professionals like themselves.
The second group are RU journalists, ex players, and the people who go to RU internationals. I'm afraid most of these have a pre-1995 mentality still; they are, as Jon Wilkin succinctly put it, "dismissive of what rugby league has brought to their sport". Unfortunately they form a large part of the RU commentariat at the moment.
Eventually the journalists will be replaced by people who've grown up playing and watching RU after 1995, and the tone of journalism will become less tribal. But it will take a few years yet.
