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Eight long years ago, an 18-year-old by the name of Sam Burgess made his Super League debut in bitterly cold Northern England.
Burgess now sits among the top tier of NRL superstars enjoying the glitz and glamour that being a professional rugby league player in Sydney brings.
The Englishman recently announced he was returning home to play rugby union, with both eyes set on a Rugby World Cup appearance in 2015.
Stating he had an itch to get back to the motherland and challenge himself in another code, Burgess will have his bags packed and ready to go by the end of this NRL season.
Those close to Burgess can argue until their blue in the face that it wasn’t about money, but recent history suggests that those code hoppers that have gone before him all went for more than just a ‘challenge’.
Just like Wendell Sailor, Mat Rogers, Lote Tuqiri and Sonny Bill Williams, Burgess will be back in the NRL at some stage and he will be forgiven.
How sweet the day will be when one of these types admits that the money was too good to turn down. That yes, playing across Europe in front of massive crowds is a wonderful experience, but at least be honest and tell us all that the financial gains were the underlining factor.
Rugby league will survive without Burgess. In his absence, it will continue to thrive.
Yet every time one of our players walks out, we all panic. We begin to buckle and run to the mirror like a paranoid adolescent teenager vigorously looking ourselves over and asking, “What is so wrong with me?”
The fact is there is nothing wrong with us. Rugby league is golden. We’re sweet.
Rugby union experts are calling it a great signing and it certainly is that. Nobody is denying Burgess is an impressive athlete with the attributes to walk into rugby and conquer it immediately.
These rugby experts though are already using those two dreaded words all young players in that code don’t want to hear, ‘publicity exercise’. For every NRL star rugby union acquires, a young rugby talent is banished.
One less spot in the national team for them.
A dream kyboshed.
South Sydney owner Russell Crowe told The Daily Telegraph that Burgess had a burning desire to play State of Origin for New South Wales.
“In rugby league, while the NRL is the top competition in the world by a fair way, the pinnacle of our game isn’t a Test jersey – it is State of Origin,” Crowe said.
“Sam, by his place of birth, is prevented from competing at that next level. He’d love nothing more than to have the opportunity to pull on a blue jersey.”
Kiwi dual international Williams has also previously stated that he wanted in on our biggest games of the year. The exit of men like Burgess and Williams is the very reason why we need to keep State of Origin as is.
Why give Englishman and New Zealanders the opportunity to play the purest game we have just because they’re superstars?
Why take the dream away from our kids just because rugby union continue to do so?
Origin is one of many reasons why rugby league is different to other codes. Rival code chief executives have tried and failed to emulate the essence of Origin for years.
If we give in to the demands of the ever-hungry modern day athlete, we not only lose State of Origin but we lose another piece of ourselves.
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