“A lot of pain or adversity can be a great foundation for future success,” Sam Burgess says as we track back through the dark times, as well as the glory years, which have shaped him. Burgess, the once imperious rugby league player from Yorkshire who earned searing fame and then infamy in Australia, is about to start his second campaign as the head coach of Warrington Wolves.
Having guided Warrington to third place in Super League and to the Challenge Cup final last season, Burgess aims to end the club’s 70-year wait for another championship. It is a sign of the calm hope he feels now that the 36-year-old can reflect on the tumult and strife he has endured – starting with the death of his father from motor neurone disease when Burgess was a teenager to playing with a shattered cheekbone and fractured eye socket while inspiring the South Sydney Rabbitohs to their first NRL title in 43 years in 2014.
A year later, after a sudden switch of codes to rugby union, Burgess was made a scapegoat for England’s abject collapse in the group stage of their home World Cup. But that controversy seemed mild compared to the disturbing allegations surrounding the breakdown of his first marriage which had the Australian media pursuing him relentlessly in 2020.
“It teaches you some valuable lessons,” Burgess says of these troubling experiences. “My father died almost 20 years ago. I was 17 and there’re not many days now where you don’t remember moments or how you dealt with it.”
Burgess has told me before how he found comfort as a boy in the pleasure his father felt when being pushed around Morrisons in his wheelchair and when the two of them just sat and listened to the rain on their conservatory roof. Such tender moments, and brutal circumstances, allow Burgess to speak openly in a ramshackle room at Warrington’s training centre.
His renown as a player could not stem the uncertainty that surged through him this time last year as he prepared for his first season as a head coach. “Yes,” he says when I ask if he felt self-doubt. “When I was offered the job it was like: ‘Oh, wow. Can I do that? It’s a big job.’ I felt on my own and didn’t know if my methodology and philosophy would stick. It was my first time doing it.”
Burgess leans back in his chair and grins, in relief. “It landed really well and we had a positive year. From the day I arrived, and met the players, we started getting a grip. Obviously I’ve got amazing people around me. Gary Chambers [the director of rugby] is a great guy while Martin Gleeson is a phenomenal coach. Richard Marshall [his other assistant] has been a head coach before. We’ve got a good crew and so I realised I’m not by myself. I’ve got people I can lean on and so, from day one, really, the doubt faded away.
“This season I’ve got higher expectations. I don’t think anyone was happy with the way it finished last year [with Warrington just failing to make the grand final after losing 10-8 to Hull KR in a ferocious playoff]. We’ve really worked hard over the past three months. Just small margins – I’m not changing a lot.”
Has it been difficult as a coach to find the necessary detachment from his players? “I’m still learning. I’ve got players in my side that are older than me so I’m figuring it out because, naturally, I’m close to the guys and get on well socially with them. But when it’s business time they understand I take my responsibilities seriously.”
For Burgess, the hardest part of coaching is “when one of my players gets injured”. He says: “We had some bad injuries last year and that’s tough. I get really close to them, and know how much work they’ve put in, and I just don’t like seeing them hurt. I also hate losing. I wasn’t a great loser as a player and it can be even harder as a coach. But I try to move on pretty quick because I’m the leader. I can’t be grumpy all week as that means they will become grumpy.”
The Super League season begins on Thursday, with the champions Wigan facing Leigh, while the Wire, as Warrington are still called, are away against Huddersfield on Sunday afternoon. It will be another first for Burgess as he has never coached against any of his three brothers – all of whom played alongside him in South Sydney. But Thomas, one of his younger twin brothers, will make his debut for Huddersfield after playing 249 game for the Rabbitohs.
“We’re from Dewsbury originally,” Burgess says of the market town in West Yorkshire where Thomas has returned after 11 years in Sydney. “Let’s say he’s adjusting. He’s got two girls of six and four who are just starting school and a six-month-old boy. I went over there last weekend for some dinner and he and his wife are just about settling in.
“We’ve got a brothers’ WhatsApp group and there’s been friendly banter. But George, his twin, said: ‘Thomas, stop being soft.’ I thought: ‘It’s a good point. We’ll be brothers forever but business is business.’”
Yet another first awaits Burgess in week three when Warrington are in Las Vegas to face Wigan. It’s part of rugby league’s concerted plan to break fresh ground and Burgess is only faintly bemused. “I went to Vegas, socially, around 13 years ago. I didn’t think I’d ever go back. But Thomas played there last year with the NRL and really enjoyed it. I think it’ll just grow year on year and we’re excited.”
The novelty will be freighted with the magnitude of playing Wigan who, last season, won all four major trophies. “Yeah, they’re good, aren’t they?” Burgess says wryly. “We had some real battles with them but we missed the jump against them at Wembley [in the Challenge Cup final]. That was probably our worst performance of the season. We played them later in the year and beat them convincingly. They had a few guys out so we’ll see each other in Vegas.”
Before then, in Warrington’s first home game against Catalans Dragons a week on Friday, the Halliwell Jones Stadium will be named in Luke Littler’s honour for just that one match. Littler is from Warrington and a fan of the club; but the 18-year-old, who became the darts world champion last month, has had his life turned inside out by fame.
It’s an experience that burned Burgess for years in Sydney and his admiration for the teenager’s skill and nerve is matched by an awareness of the challenges that now dominate Littler’s life. “He came to training a couple of times, and had breakfast with us last year, as he’s a big Warrington fan. He’s a magical talent and his courage under pressure has been really inspiring. But I have the same worry about his fame. He can’t walk around without being recognised and it really changes your life.”
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In Sydney, especially towards the end of his career, Burgess felt “hunted”. Wherever he turned he saw another camera or reporter or fan in pursuit of him. Adoration of the Rabbitohs’ star player soured as Burgess’s life spiralled out of control. He ended up in rehab after a deluge of tabloid headlines and court cases. Burgess was finally cleared, after an appeal, of intimidating his former father-in-law, Mitchell Hooke. His lawyer had told an earlier court hearing in that case that separate allegations of assault made against him by his first wife, Phoebe, “were born out of malice or retaliation” and, after investigation, the police took no further action.
Burgess is now married to his teenage sweetheart, Lucy, with whom he has a young daughter, and he suggests that he never doubted he would win his legal battles. “It was tough, the labels put on me, and I don’t wish it on anyone. But I chose to remain quiet and not play their game … I was cleared.”
He also admits: “I wasn’t perfect and I made errors. But I took some responsibility for that and you move forward.”
The situation is complicated because Burgess’s two children with his ex-wife still live in Australia. “It’s tough and that’s the hardest part of my job – I’m not around my older kids, Poppy and Billy, as often as I wish. But I speak to them often and I was back with them in the off-season, which was great. That’s part of the price I had to pay to be here, and I have to make the best of the situation.”
Burgess would like to return to Australia, one day, to coach in the NRL. “I don’t have a timeframe and I’m really enjoying what I do here. But I miss my kids and I would like to be there in the not-too-distant future. But there’s so much scrutiny over there and I’d been under the watchful eye for the last 15 years. I just wasn’t ready to go back into it [as an NRL coach]. But I was ready to be head coach so that’s why being in Warrington is probably the perfect scenario – apart from leaving Poppy and Billy over there. But I know my kids want me to be successful and make a difference and doing well here will get me to the end route quicker.”
If he does return to the NRL in the next few years will the scrutiny be any less intense? “I don’t know. We were back there recently and nothing had changed.”
It’s very different in Cheshire where Burgess lives with Lucy and their little girl. “We love it and, if we do get stopped, it’s pleasant, it’s friendly. We live much more freely and normally, which is nice, especially with our daughter, Robbie. It’s actually been really refreshing being back – minus the cold. I do like the sunshine.”
Burgess still looks tanned in February and he laughs. “We were in Tenerife for a week but I’m not going to lie. I’ve been to the sun beds. Guilty. I just like the heat and warmth for 10 minutes.”
His candour and ease with his often fraught past is also illustrated when he reveals that he has been watching the Six Nations – even though he had such a difficult time in union. “There have been some great games. I love watching rugby union as, now I know a little more about it since I played, I can see what they’re trying to do and it’s not as much of a mess. I talk a lot about the games with Martin Gleeson, who was England’s attack coach, and I’m good friends with Michael Cheika [the former Wallabies coach now at Leicester]. I can learn a lot from them.”
What does Burgess imagine he will be doing in another 10 years? “I don’t know because I live right here, right now. But I have ambitions. It could be in business but, knowing me, I might be coaching forever. As long as I feel like I can make a difference, I’ll be doing it.”
