LOL at Mike Ford.

I feel a little sorry for Bath in all of this. They are looking down the barrel of losing a promising player. Not through any fault of their own, but because the England set up and the RU Media / Hangers on have treated SB very poorly and played him out of the position his club had chosen as his.

ANOTHER case? How many cases have they been?

I would also like to know

Surely if Burgess was staying at Bath he'd personally confirm it. Indeed if that is his intention he needs to do just that otherwise his silence speaks volumes

Too much pointing to the latter. Players Dads, Players, Media....Lots of Smoke, where's the Fire?

Let's be frank, Burgess went to RU for the world cup. Club rugby plays a distant 2nd fiddle to international RU. His England career is in tatters, he might as well come back home

Exactly, if he comes back now he'll get to play in a Four Nations event then a Rugby League World Cup the following year. Granted our World Cup isn't as big.....but at least he's pretty much nailed on to be a part of it, instead of slim hope he'll make it back into the international fold in RU.

He'll finish the season at Bath. After that he may or may not return to Souths but I think that is going to depend very much on what fee Bath want and what changes take place at the England RFU. For example Eddie Jones has been linked with an England coaching position and he has publicly criticised the way Burgess has been handled and attacked those throwing blame at him.

If Burgess wants out then there's no point in Bath keeping him.
So GH has spoken to Sam about coming to us and now he has gone public with our pursuit of him. If Sam wasnt keen on coming to us during the chat then Gary wouldn't have gone to the YEP.
Just come home Sam. Have a year with us then go to Souths then have the chance to LEAD your country to World Cup glory in 2017

i cant see that. Staying until the end of the season at bath takes him up to June, gives him no pre-season and throws him in to the middle of an NRL year at full speed with no time to acclimatise.

If he moves now, he hits next year running. He moves any other year he will either be leaving part way through an RU season or joining part way through an NRL year. Now is really the only clean time for a break. Its probably the only time he can move as well if he wants to be ready for the 2017 RLWC

I would also say that this idea of going to leeds for a year, then souths when they can fit him in hasnt come about from nowhere. Its clearly something that has been discussed at Leeds, at Souths and with Burgess which indicates its a serious enough consideration.

I think he either comes back this year to Leeds, then Souths next year, or i think its the last we see of him in RL as his reason to stay there is the 2019 world cup the end of which will see him knocking on for 31 off the back of a 15 year first grade career and a body which hasnt played RL for 6 years and a game based around physicality.

If he plays out the season at Bath he won't rejoin Souths until 2017. He won't go back mid season. That might be his plan - just to show he can genuinely "make it" in RU.

This just reads as one of GH's kite flying PR releases - zero substance and the same sort of "we're always in the hunt for world class players" mantra he's rolled out in the past.