Scandal-plagued Burgess frontrunner for new coaching gig at Perth Bears alongside former Seven news boss Anthony De Ceglie
Footy bad boy Sam Burgess is considered the frontrunner to take on a massive coaching gig alongside former Seven news boss-turned CEO Anthony De Ceglie.
The Perth Bears’ newly appointed CEO Anthony De Ceglie will have to continue his work on corporate culture when he starts his new NRL job.
Having pitched himself as a cultural “change agent” at Channel 7, the leadership manifesto of the recently departed Seven West Media news boss will be put the test by the players, fans, agents and administrators associated with the nation’s third oldest and most scandal-plagued football code.
A return to his old stomping ground of Perth, home to Ben Cousin’s West Coast his Eagles and his new toughest critic Kerry Stokes, his boss until last week, is guaranteed to bring fresh scrutiny.
De Ceglie may soon be enforcing his hard-line stance on conduct – one that last year saw him sack a valued Channel 7 reporter for sharing an animated image depicting a fully clothed former female colleague who hadn’t complained – alongside “Slammin’ Sam” Burgess, the former Souths Sydney league star now hotly favoured to become the Perth Bears’ inaugural coach.
Record-setting NRL coach Wayne Bennett perhaps said it best in 2021 when asked about the challenges of recruiting players to the new NRL team Redcliffe Dolphins, which Bennett was preparing to coach.
“Culture, every time,” said Bennett when asked how he would choose players for the Dolphins.
“The talent will come, we’ll grow the talent, we’ll find the talent, but it’s who we are and what we stand for that’s important within clubs.”
Along with any top tier highly paid coaching role at the Perth Bears comes responsibility for establishing – and maintaining – club culture.
The role of being the cultural envoy to the Bears in the nation’s affluent but small western capital could test “Slammin’ Sam” whose idea of culture has to date been a weekend’s blokey bonding session around the BBQ in Russell Crowe’s off-the-beaten-track backyard at Nana Glen in northern NSW.
The West Yorkshireman, along with former Queensland great Mal Meninga, are considered the frontrunners to coach the NRL’s newest club which makes its debut in the NRL competition in 2027.
Publicity magnet Burgess, who is currently coaching the Warrington Wolves in the British Super League and off contract in 2026, is said to have the backing of the NRL’s key powerbrokers for the Bears’ gig.
They’re likely the same powerbrokers who handed Burgess his NRL Hall of Fame Award in 2024 making him the first English international player to receive one, a distinction which upset homegrown league stars.
Burgess’s award raised fresh questions about the NRL’s commitment to improving the code’s scandal-plagued culture and its long and chequered history with alcohol and drug abuse which it maintains it is cleaning up.
For the past two years – count ‘em... one, ahhh, two – Slammin’ and Jammin’ Sam has been portrayed within the NRL as a posterboy for rehabilitation.
Burgess’s image overhaul began in 2023 – the same year he left his beloved Sydney Sydney Rabbitohs – and Australia – to take up his new coaching role in the UK.
Half a world away from Sydney and the destructive influences that repeatedly saw Burgess fall foul of the law – the confessed drug and alcohol abuse, the questionable mates and more questionable role models – Burgess began to reinvent himself.
Should Burgess be appointed inaugural coach of the Bears, De Ceglie, like the rest of us, will be asked to believe that the scandal-prone Burgess, who in 2022 was fined $30,000 by the NRL for breaching its code of conduct by taking illicit drugs in 2018, for driving with cocaine in his system in 2021 and for threatening a player, is a changed man.
Allegations a Souths team doctor had administered liquid Valium to calm the player after a days-long bender with older brother Luke and a $20,000 club fine to Souths for failing to report the allegations to the NRL’s integrity unit could even be overlooked.
The public was expected to accept Burgess’s lifestyle – along with a swag of poor driving offences (driving an unregistered vehicle, driving on a suspended licence, driving under the influence …) and claims of a lewd 2018 sexting scandal, which he denied – was just standard, and therefore accepted, behaviour in rugby league.
Burgess would address his drugs and alcohol problems – and a 28-day stint in rehab – during a high profile stint on TV show SAS Australia in 2021 during a break in his coaching career brought on by investigations into his conduct.
He would win his season on SAS prompting TV insiders to claim Burgess’s victory over rival competitors including Jana Pittman, Dan Ewing and John Steffensen, was contrived to deliver Channel 7 a redemption story that would garner maximum publicity.
Burgess duly spilt his guts on the show and profited handsomely, $1 million was estimated, for doing so.
Although the sexting allegations and infamous bender with brother Luke had taken place in 2018 when he was still playing, his comments suggested his abuse of drugs and alcohol began after he started coaching.
“I started coaching again … We started doing well. I got given the head coaching role (at Souths) … consequently I had to stand down from both roles so I lost it all again,” he said.
“Since then, there’s been a police investigation into me about some behaviour that (was) claimed. I turned to drinking, taking drugs.”
Anyone looking to revive Burgess’s career locally, would be remiss in dismissing the comments’ and the implied timeline.
For rookie CEO and first-time sports administrator De Ceglie, the flashy short-lived TV boss purportedly tasked with the culture clean-up at Channel 7 after the network’s Spotlight program became embroiled in claims involving sex workers, massages and cocaine enjoyed by alleged Brittany Higgins’ rapist Bruce Lehrmann, it should at least be a potential red flag.
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