RWC 2015: Gordon D'Arcy's distrust of Sam Burgess is utterly justified

The faith shown in him looks more misplaced with every passing game – or non-passing game

Sam Burgess is tackled by Scott Williams of Wales at Twickenham last Saturday (Getty Images)

Gordon D’Arcy has retired from professional rugby, which is probably as well. Had he still been a going concern, the hottest rugby ticket in town would not have been a seat in the royal box for the World Cup final between whoever and whoever at Twickenham at the end of the month, but a front-row pew for the Bath-Leinster meeting down in the West Country on 11 November.

There are many things the England player Sam Burgess cannot do as an inside centre right now – kick the ball, win a foot race and get his head around the complexities of the union game being three of them – but he is handsomely equipped to knock seven bells out of an opponent.

Especially an opponent-turned-critic like D’Arcy, who won 82 caps as an Ireland midfielder as well as a fistful of titles with the Dublin-based provincial side and felt the need to explain why the expensively recruited rugby cross-coder was no one’s idea of an answer in the red-rose No 12 shirt.

Some of the language in D’Arcy’s full-frontal attack on Burgess in the Irish Times was startlingly blunt. “I started playing centre in 2004,” he wrote, reviewing England’s deeply wounding World Cup failure against Wales. “It took until the 2007 World Cup before I felt properly attuned to the nuances of the position and felt comfortable playing Test matches in the No 12 jersey. Sam Burgess only arrived at a Bath training session last October. It’s simply not possible for him to be ready.

“And now we have proof. Burgess lacks the sense of timing, in attack and defence, required to be effective at international level. His naivety embarrassed those around him and severely damaged England’s chances of reaching the quarter-finals.” Ouch, ouch and triple-ouch.

It will not go down at all well with the red-rose hierarchy, who are already sensitive enough about their ultra-defensive and highly controversial midfield selection for the Wales game – hence the unusually prickly public appearance by the backs coach Andy Farrell earlier this week. But D’Arcy knows his stuff on the subject and on the evidence available, his suspicion that the Burgess experiment has the potential to compromise the England campaign has legs.

Of course, it is perfectly possible that the Yorkshireman will stand up to be counted against the Wallabies this weekend and play a positive role in keeping England in their own tournament. He is likely to be involved in the match-day squad, even if, as seems probable, he is demoted to accommodate another Bath centre in Jonathan Joseph.

But for all his iron will and physical prowess, there has not been the faintest sign of a decisive performance in the year he has spent in the union game to date. As a consequence, the faith shown in him by Farrell and the head coach Stuart Lancaster looks more misplaced with each passing game. Or non-passing game, in Burgess’s case.

If this goes wrong for England – if they become the first host nation in World Cup history to be knocked out before the knock-out stuff actually begins – Lancaster will be left to reflect on a high-rolling bet that failed to pay out. His decision to fast-track Burgess into the red-rose squad effectively put the squeeze on two centres, Billy Twelvetrees of Gloucester and Luther Burrell of Northampton, in whom he had invested a good deal of time and effort. Centres who, lest we forget, had combined so fruitfully over the course of the 2014 Six Nations.

Since succeeding the ill-starred Martin Johnson as England boss almost four years ago, he has repeatedly talked of supporting players who had “credit in the bank” – his way of giving voice to the importance of loyalty.

He has never been slow to drop those in poor form, from Jonny May and Owen Farrell outside the scrum to Billy Vunipola in the back row. But dumping his players on a hunch is not his style. At least, it wasn’t his style.

There are tough-minded, hard-bitten Premiership coaches up and down the country who cannot understand for the life of them how this situation has arisen. Even Bath, the club paying heavy money for Burgess’s services, decided midway through last season that if he was going to make a fist of it in his new sport, he would find it far easier from the blind-side flank than in any of the midfield positions.

“Burgess never got to the pace against Wales,” wrote D’Arcy. “He clearly bust a gut, but effort and strength were never going to be enough.” Strong stuff indeed. The Englishman has the opportunity to make the Irishman eat his words, for the simple reason that he’s still playing. But does he have the ability?