Top class RU backs have the potential to switch to League and be very good, (I agree O'Driscoll would've been a great League player) but it doesn't often happen the other way round - wingers excepted.

Trying to shoe horn a League prop into the centre position in RU is likely to fail miserably, even if the player is world class.

S Burgess is one of those rugby players whose skills aren't specific enough for RU - if he'd started out playing RU he'd probably have been a blind side flanker or no.8, but if you were to put him into either of those positions now he'd loose most of his dynamism and impact on the field.

It just seems like blinkered opportunism from the RFU, but then they are not renowned for sensible forward thinking, they haven't had a genuine success since Robinson.

Why they would look back at Vainikolo, Farrel, Ashton, Hape, Tompkins and Eastmond and think it was still worth doing is highly questionable; yes they all ended up playing for England, but were they really significantly better than other players around at the time? I would think the jury is still out on all of them.

Well, you're entitled to your opinion. I can't agree with you on this one I'm afraid. I think Burgess is a much better player than Kirke. But we can agree to differ if you think otherwise.

Maybe, if rings/ medals were so important to Sam he should have joined leeds when the rumours were abounding. surely if medals were so important he would have jumped at the chance of joining on a Kirkesque salary rather than travel to the other side of the world.

Can we leave Ian Kirke alone at all?

It's f*******g embarrassing.

Sorry, I was just pointing out that within the restraints of the salary cap you can't have a team full of Sam Burgess's.

Not sure the marquee player is the way to go but its good to see we are willing to do something.