Yeah, i'm sure that factors into burgess thinking.

Money - check
Chance to win with country (realistic chance) - check
chance to become a national icon (ru much higher profile) - check
get's to come home (as nice as aus is, it's not home) - check

But oh no, the RU are desperate to have me, but i think i'll turn it down because i don't think i'll play very well (no professional sportsmen at high level as that mentality).

If it's the RFU's thinking you mean, they obviously think he can excel hence they will pay big $$$$.

RL once again being shown up as the small fry it is.

If Joel Tomkins, Brad Barritt, and Billy Twelvetrees can play in the centres for the England RU team then Sam Burgess can without a doubt, he's in a different stratosphere in terms of ability to those 3.

He can play there. Would he be a perfect fit there? Probably not IMO.

As has already been said, he'll do some good things with ball in hand creating physical mismatches against smaller outside backs. He'll hit some people hard in the contact.

He's got zero kicking game though. He's going to be one of the slower centres in the top flight. He'll need to be brought along slowly until he learns how to function in the tackle area and the nuances of retaining/winning possession after the tackle.

For the money he's going to cost someone, he's not going to provide value for money in the short term. English club rugby union is not swimming in surplus cash that it can afford to waste on "projects" when they can go out and sign a ready made player from elsewhere.

This whole thing is the RFU trying to play Billy Big-Balls in the media and generate some hype. They've clearly not learned from the expensive on-field failure that was Andy Farrell.

I was thinking from the Rfu point of view. If the offerwas there Burgess would have to consider it, but it's an expensive ggamble on their part.

Another thing to factor in is the ill-feeling the RFU are generating among their top-flight clubs with these kind of "sponsored" deals.

If the RFU are stumping up a massive transfer fee effectively because Bath can't afford to, how are the other 11 Premiership clubs going to feel about that? There have already been some negative mutterings.

Similarly in Wales over Sam Warburton's recent deal to prevent him going to France.
The whole business is an indictment of the much vaunted development produced by the RU academies at all levels, despite their financial clout, that they feel the need to go elsewhere to find a possibly half decent centre.

If true seems a bizarre signing, it's challenging enough to move codes without the added pressure of not playing in his normal position .
I would have thought a more sensible signing would have been Sam Tompkins ,play him at stand off ,sorry I meant fly half. Then move Farell to inside centre.
England are woeful in the centre position at the moment.
I often thought Keith Senior in his prime would have been sensational playing for England RU.
When the England coaching and managing staff were assembling the World Cup winning squad,they had a list of top RL players they wanted to sign.
Apparently the blazers at twickenham chickened out, anyway good old Jason Robinson did enough on his own to win the World Cup .
I would love to know just who they wanted apart from Robinson . As I mentioned before senior would have been superb
as would Kieron Cunningham.

Senior in his youth played RU for Huddersfield YMCA I believe.
I agree he would have been a great RU centre, not sure about his kicking game though.
I always thought that Brian O'Driscoll would have been sensational in RL.

One of the more successful Academies in England is the one at Leeds Carnegie, ironically.

Produced two of last weekend's England side in Burrell and Care, continues to beat the Academies of Premiership sides. Turned Sale over by twenty points away from home.

Top class RU backs have the potential to switch to League and be very good, (I agree O'Driscoll would've been a great League player) but it doesn't often happen the other way round - wingers excepted.

Trying to shoe horn a League prop into the centre position in RU is likely to fail miserably, even if the player is world class.

S Burgess is one of those rugby players whose skills aren't specific enough for RU - if he'd started out playing RU he'd probably have been a blind side flanker or no.8, but if you were to put him into either of those positions now he'd loose most of his dynamism and impact on the field.

It just seems like blinkered opportunism from the RFU, but then they are not renowned for sensible forward thinking, they haven't had a genuine success since Robinson.

Why they would look back at Vainikolo, Farrel, Ashton, Hape, Tompkins and Eastmond and think it was still worth doing is highly questionable; yes they all ended up playing for England, but were they really significantly better than other players around at the time? I would think the jury is still out on all of them.

Bath press is convinced he's already signed up for Bath next year - been running in the local press all last week.

One thought is that it's just a way of squeezing more money out of Souths (the same circus is going on around Cameron Smith's on/off move to Brisbane next season). The other is that it's genuine and he has been approached and tempted with the idea of being fast tracked into the England WC squad (and a $h!tload of money as well).

A lot of talk about him playing centre - I think this would be catastrophic if it comes to pass. England lack a cutting edge in the centres, they lack real pace and they lack passing skill. Pace and passing skill are not two things that spring to mind when I think of Sam Burgess. If you want an offloading battering ram in the backs then there are better options already in Union. There are plenty of promising centre prospects that offer what we really lack and the current England management needs to look at in more detail (Burrell being one and Kyle Eastmond the other). Which I am sure they will.
However, I can see Burgess fitting in at 8. All England seem to expect of a no.8 these days is someone to smash the ball over the gain line and offload when possible. Also he could really dish out the tackles. Jerry Collins was a great All Black 6/8 and that's pretty much all he did. Tom Wood and Robshaw do the thinking in the back row and we don't pick a number 8 to win lineout ball, Burgess would fit in very well with those two.

Interesting.

Mega LOLZ.

Re: Burgess at 8.

Would he really offer that much more in the way of getting across the gain line and ability to offload than Billy Vunipola currently offers?