He's a product of fine East Hull schooling.

Ford is a complete and utter prick. Hopefully his actions will mean no more top RL players going anywhere near any club he's involved with and his career dies as quickly a death as his credibility and reputation.

I don't like Ford targeting RL players, but to be fair Burgess has made him look an idiot by no doubt telling him he was going to stay with Bath right up until the last moment, leading to Ford making comments along those lines to the press (and possibly to Bath's owner as well), and by departing mid season when Ford has planned around having him in the team. Ford's comments come across as very bitter but I do understand them.

Similarly at first sight the Bath captain's actions in keeping Burgess away rather than a proper goodbye seem a bit childish, but in a team environment I think its quite understandable that you might not want the team's highest profile player coming in and saying "thanks for everything but this gig sucks so see you later".

I tend to think a lot of the hysteria in the RU media and amongst some ex-players and coaches is down to the fact that they simply cannot countenance that someone doesn't think RU vastly superior to RL and has the nerve to decide to leave as soon as he can.

I couldn't disagree more. The key thing about chess whilst in application it appears complex, the rules themselves are actually relatively simple and there's only limited technical structure: It's the combination of single moment simplicity into almost infinite options over time (with multiple moves) that creates true complexity, from human choices in this pretty unstructured environment. This is exactly like League, which is an options game rather than a routines/process game.

Union on the other hand has more in common with a highly complex, structured rules-based game like Dungeons & Dragons. The surface complexity and ongoing need for an outside reference or judgement as a result (the referee's interpretation of a myriad of technicalities) actually reduces the ability of the human actors to make choices, and create a complex hard-to-read outlook of future options.

Nobody would argue chess players are less intelligent than people who play Dungeons & Dragons. The same's true for League players - they need to be much more creative, planning moves multiple stages in advance, with multiple layers of options available at each stage. I wish people like Wilkin would make this point instead.

Re the draughts vs chess example, IIRC Poe made the case for draughts being the game for more intelligent people (The Murders in the Rue Morgue).

Ford's reported comments would worry me if I were employing him. I guess he'll be safe while his son is playing though.

I agree with that, especially the bit about Bath's owner, who Ford had no doubt re-assured Sam would say. But from all I've heard, rather than read, Burgess discussed his contract extension before the WC but didn't then speak to Ford until after when he had made up his mind.

Mike Ford; "yeah well i didn't like her anyway, she's not even that good looking, if she doesn't want to go out with me anymore then more fool her, it's her that's missing out!"

You missed out the bit where Ford calls Burgess a fat slag and then stalks him on Facebook liking pictures of him at Souths.

I agree. But it would have taken him until the end of his contract to learn it.

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.

Theres a piece in the telegraph by Will Greenwood that I thought summed it up well. He basically says he thinks Sam would have made a great RU player but was let down by both his club and country. He actually states tha all the players left out had there chance and didn't make the grade and after the dust has settled have suddenly become great players in their own minds.

Burgess says in his interview after landing back in Oz that he spoke to Ford 4 weeks ago about wanting to go back.
There may well have been some back and forth, but Ford can't say it was a last minute change of heart.

He was playing the game with the press just like everyone else hoping it would all fall his way, but it didn't.

Even though he's had some ex players having a dig, though only a few, and Ford's comment in the press after he left, and coach and Captain Ford not wanting Burgess to say goodbye to the team before he left.......I think Burgess has been nothing but a gentleman and classy in his press conferences.
He hasn't slagged anyone off on Union. He hasn't slagged the game off.

I'm glad he has come back. They wasted their opportunity. It should keep them at arms length for a while.

Lancaster has stepped down #blameBurgess