FACTS, not perceptions: that is what England’s selections for the World Cup have been based upon, so said Andy Farrell last week. It’s a hard argument to hold together in the specific headline cases of the man who was selected and the man who missed out.
Here are the facts behind Sam Burgess’s selection. Two thumping tackles against a dire French back-line in a game in which he made a positive impression primarily because of the contrast with his unexceptional if steady development for Bath. This is all we can be aware of as far as his union career is concerned. But there are also the facts that have clearly impressed Farrell behind closed doors. The team have been in camp for 10 weeks, and Burgess must have achieved wonders in the privacy of that England camp.
Beware those same coaches telling us of Burgess’s feats away from our eyes — they are the ones who a few weeks ago misread Luke Cowan-Dickie’s Test match readiness.
So much for facts surrounding the selected celeb, what about the one evicted from England’s World Cup camp? Everybody saw how well Danny Cipriani played in the final 15 minutes for England in Paris. Everybody with the vaguest understanding of the game would have seen how George Ford responded to having a playmaking partner. This was a magical impact substitution.
But 20 minutes cannot, we are told, be the sole reason to select somebody. There has to be more than one piece of evidence. So what other facts are available in the case of Cipriani? He came off the bench and scored a try against Italy with his first touch of the ball in last season’s Six Nations. He played with conviction and assurance when he emerged again from the bench against New Zealand in 2014.
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He started one game for England last season. It was against an admittedly rag-tag Barbarians team but, boy, was he good, strolling around, looking so assured in everything he did, kicking perfectly, playing those around him into the game and gliding through for a late try. Just to remind the selectors that here was a team player with consummate individual talent.
On the basis of these facts, the latter man was dropped from the squad, the former selected. How about the perceptions? Cipriani is perceived as rugby union’s individualistic celebrity. He is the sport’s tabloid Prince Harry, good for column inches but bad for the image of a squad that states its obsessive belief in the power of the collective. Late nights and early-morning brushes with varying forms of authority, famous girlfriends — Cipriani’s perception is anathema to England’s virtuous ways.
Burgess, like the rest of the squad, was picked on fact, but it can’t be disputed that the perception of the Slamming One is everything Lancaster could desire. A modest, unassuming and extremely decent bloke – that happens to be both a perception and fact – everyone seems won over by his charm, and his aura.
Yet Lancaster doesn’t place much store by the most powerful perception of all surrounding Burgess. More than once he has said such concepts as “auras” are irrelevant if the owner of that aura lacks the wherewithal to be a leader and not a follower. Here is another perception — that Burgess is a leader. He might well be in the 13-a-side code but in union, where he has spent most of his first season admitting he is happy to learn, he remains a rookie.
Perceptions, not facts; this is the shocking reality behind one of the sorrier selections made by England in recent times. The facts surrounding Cipriani made a potent case for a late inclusion as the sort of impact substitute capable of plucking victory from the jaws of defeat. We do not know what happened in training but, on the field, where theory is turned into practice — or not — he has excelled in every test England put to him.
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Burgess has few facts to support his inclusion. A solid start to a club career, no more or less; a step up to be sure for England but not much more than that. It is the perceptions Farrell dismisses that dictated the decision to select Burgess. So, too, was it the perceptions that date back to before this management was in place that cost Cipriani his place in the England World Cup squad.
Perhaps we rugby atheists will be proved wrong and something miraculous has been happening behind the scenes. Outside the immediate management of England I do not know of a single rugby thinker who believes that Burgess can accomplish a miracle. Oh we of little faith.