Grand Sam Burgess steals the show as Bath overcome Wasps

http://www.theguardian.com/sport/2015/jan/10/bath-wasps-premiership-match-report

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The reason for Bath’s huge investment in Sam Burgess became more obvious when the league convert, reportedly earning £500,000 a year, finally looked comfortable in his union skin, capped a rewarding day with a first Premiership try.

Unfortunately for England the promise of something possible for the future and the sight of both sides picking up bonus points only masked the fact that Semesa Rokoduguni and Christian Wade, two wings who might be needed in the Six Nations, limped off injured, Rokoduguni with what looked like a damaged groin.

However, five games into his union career and partnered in the Bath centre for the first time by another England prospect, Jonathan Joseph, Burgess began to look the part as Bath ended Wasps five-game winning run by outscoring them five tries to four.

“It’s improving week to week and I’m enjoying it a bit more,” said Burgess. “It’s a good place to be when you’re winning.” Bath’s head coach Mike Ford said: “It was his best game so far. It wasn’t perfect but he’s getting there.”

Within 80 seconds Burgess made his first real break in Premiership rugby, clattering through tackles and sucking in so many defenders that out wide Rokoduguni got to the Wasps five-metre line almost unhindered.

Subtler skills came from Joseph who chose to dance his way through the middle rather than take contact, but Burgess became George Ford’s go-to man, the fly-half using his inside-centre twice in the move which lead to Bath’s first try.

The first pass won a penalty and from that Burgess made the first dent before Henry Thomas took the ball on and Francois Louw completed the job dotting down under the posts to make Ford’s conversion a formality.

In 11 minutes Burgess had probably contributed more than in all his other Premeirship outings put together and the reported place in the Saxons squad to play Ireland Wolfhounds at the end of the month suddenly looked a lot less fanciful than it had done after the defeat at Leicester six days earlier, when he reckoned he touched the ball just once in the first half.

“The game wasn’t slow like last week, which suited my game and the teams,” said Burgess, adding that, after having a try disallowed last week, it was “good to get the monkey off my back”.

For their part Wasps spent most of the day looking a poor reflection of the side who shredded Sale until a late flurry of tries from Ben Jacobs and the replacement fly-half Alex Lozowski fired thoughts of a second bonus point.

Previously they had showed ambition only when Alapati Leiua capped a clever line run by Nathan Hughes, another scorer in a frantic second half which brought 30 points. However, by then Wasps were close to being out of the game and looking to continue a dismal record at The Rec.

Rokoduguni had added to that Louw try, Anthony Watson making the break from under his posts to leave the wing clear and cantering home from 50 metres before he slowed, holding his groin, and only just got to the line before the cover caught up.

Burgess ended his 40 minutes of promise with the deftest of offloads out of the tackle, but the best was yet to come. Five minutes in to the second half, with Bath weaving patterns under the Wasps posts, Burgess took a clever line and Ford found him with a short pass and not even a last-gasp tackle from Leiua could stop Slamming Sam from five metres.

After that another big man, Matt Banahan, snaffled the bonus-point try after the hard work of Dave Attwood and the forwards and replacement Ollie Devoto added a fifth.

Burgess, along with Bath’s other England hopefuls, now have just one game left, against Toulouse, to catch Stuart Lancaster’s eye before England’s coach announces his squad for the Six Nations and the Wolfhounds game in 10 days.