Bath coach Mike Ford said he hoped the club had set the seal on Sam Burgess’s brief and controversial time with the west country side with a 45-14 win away to London Irish in the English Premiership on Saturday.
On Thursday, it was confirmed that Burgess was returning to Australian rugby league club South Sydney Rabbitohs, barely a year after his man-of-the-match display for the Bunnies in their NRL Grand Final triumph.
Burgess quit South Sydney to join Bath, in a bid to become a member of England’s World Cup squad.
He achieved that aim but, with Bath seeing him as a back-row forward and England an inside centre, found himself having to learn the intricacies of two different positions in a whole new ball game.
Burgess made it into the World Cup squad, a decision that led former England captain Will Carling, himself a former Test centre, to criticise coach Stuart Lancaster for rushing his cross-code recruit into the Test side.
That criticism re-surfaced after England became the first World Cup host nation to fail to get out of the pool stage.
– Naive –
At that point, rumours of Burgess’s return to league started to circulate yet, almost until the moment that the Rabbitohs confirmed they had re-signed the powerhouse player, Ford and Bath owner Bruce Craig both insisted he was staying put.
“Myself and (Bath captain) Stuart Hooper spoke to (Burgess) on Monday, he said he would address the team and at no point did he mention he wanted to leave,” said Ford, himself a former rugby league player.
“Whether I was naive or not I was hoping that he’d get through that week, but we never got that chance.”
On the field Bath, who had lost their last two games, overpowered a London Irish side reduced to 14 men in the first half when Brendan McKibbin was sent off.
It was timely win for Bath, who begin their European Champions Cup campaign against holders Toulon next weekend.
“We’re pleased after everything that’s happened, we got some good tries from the backs and looking forward to Toulon now,” said Ford.
In other matches defending champions Saracens beat Northampton 12-6 in a try-less encounter at a sodden Franklin’s Gardens.
Owen Farrell kicked four penalties out of four to see visitors Saracens to victory and the fly-half was also involved in a flare-up with England team-mate and Northampton flanker Tom Wood.
A late tackle by Wood saw Farrell respond by pushing the back-row forward. The referee, however, chose not to reverse his original penalty decision and Farrell duly landed the goal-kick to jeers from Saints fans
“It looked like handbags to me, and not too serious,” said Saracens boss Mark McCall but Northampton counterpart Jim Mallinder added: “You can’t go pushing people in the face, that is retaliation — that should have been reversed.”
England’s early exit from the World Cup, the and the first without at least one northern hemisphere semi-finalist, led to questions over whether European club rugby was helping prepare players sufficiently for the fast-paced Test game played by the All Blacks and the Wallabies.
But McCall said there was no trumping the weather.
“We want to play, but sometimes you get games like today, where the ball is incredibly slow and slippy and you have to grind it out,” he explained.
“It probably wasn’t the best advert for the Premiership but that is the way the game went and our job was to make sure we won.”
Saturday’s other matches saw promoted Worcester beat Newcastle 28-20, while Exeter went second with a 19-6 win at home to Leicester.