‘We’ll be brothers forever but business is business’: Sam Burgess on family, infamy and fears for Luke Littler

The Warrington head coach reflects on high expectations, learning from pain and a Super League opener against Huddersfield and his younger brother Thomas. “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.’”.