This is a fantastic article from Andrew Webster,
Feuds, retirements, signings: inside South Sydney's chaotic off-season
Out there, in the middle of GIO Stadium before South Sydney’s preliminary final against Canberra, Sam Burgess is gently wrestling teammate Damien Cook, wincing each time the sinews in his left shoulder take the strain.
Medical staff have needled the shoulder with painkilling medication, just as they have for the last six weeks, but that has taken away none of the pain.
Earlier, he couldn’t whack into the tackling pads with his left shoulder, only his right. When it came time for the obligatory wrestling drills, he chose Cook instead of one of the bigger forwards.
Still, it throbs with pain.
“I’d seen him in pain before,” Cooks recalls, “but that pain was something different. I had never seen him in so much agony.”
When the players return to the dressing-room for the last-minute instructions from coach Wayne Bennett, Burgess receives more attention.
Head of football Shane Richardson has been in those rooms more than anyone since Burgess arrived from England in 2010. He knows how Burgess’ pain threshold is higher than almost any other footballer he’s seen, whether it’s playing the entire 2014 grand final with a broken face or another match when Burgess suffered a compound fracture of his finger but calmly asked trainers to tape up so he could keep on playing.
Sam Burgess in the last game of football he will ever play: the 2019 NRL preliminary final against Canberra.
So, when Richardson sees the Englishman writhing in pain, despite enough painkillers to numb a horse, he’s concerned.
“Sam has never been like that,” Richardson recalls. “I’ve never heard him whinge about pain in his life. He should never have played that match.”
But Burgess does, of course.
“Next thing, from the kick-off, he’s trying to whack into Canberra players with the same shoulder,” Cook smiles. “That’s Sam: he put his body on the line so much. He’s just a different human who will do anything for his mates.”
Souths’ loss 16-10 loss to the Raiders didn’t just put them out of a grand final. When Burgess was medically retired weeks later, it kick-started a chain of events that had Souths frantically scouring the market for a replacement, saw them secure Latrell Mitchell from the Roosters — and almost cost Richardson his job.
Burgess’ departure, along with the retirement of John Sutton, which followed the early retirement of Greg Inglis in April, ripped the heart and soul out of the club — yet Souths remains a genuine premiership contender this year, starting with Cronulla at ANZ Stadium on Saturday night.
On top of that, the club has announced that Bennett will move on at the end of 2021, making way for highly regarded assistant coach Jason Demetriou, and will now deal with endless speculation for the next two seasons about where the seven-time premiership winner will end up next.
Remember, this follows the previous off-season when Souths were suddenly scrambling for a seat in the game of coaching musical chairs after Anthony Seibold signed with the Broncos, forcing Bennett to Souths.
Lesser clubs would’ve buckled, but it shows Souths’ maturity and strength that it hasn’t.
“We have a phenomenal group of people at the club who have been able to dismiss the distractions over the last two years,” Souths chief executive Blake Solly offers. “It’s a lot easier to be stable at the top when the staff and players are so dedicated and passionate.”
PLEASURE AND SHOULDER PAIN
At a meeting of the football department weeks after the 2019 season finished, Souths’ high-performance staff delivered a sentence that sent shockwaves through the organisation.
“Sam’s got a lot of problems with his shoulder and he's been advised to retire,” they reported.
Richardson's jaw hit the floor.
“Let’s get a second opinion,” he said.
It didn't matter how many opinions were sought. Burgess was done. When he underwent minor surgery on his left shoulder in June during the State of Origin period, the surgeon found an infectious liquid coming from the joint. It had eaten away at the bone.
The cruel irony was that Burgess had suffered numerous issues with his right shoulder for years. In 2011, he had minor surgery on his left but that was all.
“The advice was, ‘This is career-ending’,” Richardson says. “I won’t go into the technicalities of it, but the bottom line was he couldn’t get his shoulder above horizontal.”
Shouldering arms: Wayne Bennett and Sam Burgess.
For the rest of the season, and particularly through the finals series, Burgess played on with the help of painkilling injections.
“We were thinking we had to find a solution to this in the off-season,” Richardson says. “Then, all of a sudden, we had one anyway.”
There were three players on Souths' hitlist to replace him: Jai Arrow at the Titans, David Fifita at the Broncos and Luke Thompson at St Helens.
Richardson met with Thompson in the United Kingdom, but the club’s retention committee baulked at the England international’s asking price. Thompson eventually signed a three-year deal with the Bulldogs.
In late November, Burgess flew to Brisbane to speak to Fifita while Richardson went to the Gold Coast to meet with Arrow, who was coming off contract at the end of the 2020 season.
What isn’t commonly known is that Souths were also talking to Dragons back-rower Tyson Frizell, who is also off contract at the end of this season.
In the end, Souths signed Arrow because the asking price for Fifita was too much. While the Broncos are yet to announce Fifita’s re-signing, it’s understood the deal has been struck — the club just needs to find enough salary cap space before registering the contract with the NRL.
As much as Souths tried, they could not force Arrow out of the Titans a year earlier.
Speculation then started to crank up about signing Mitchell, who had fallen out of favour with Roosters chairman Nick Politis after he rejected their $800,000-a-season offer to stay.
Latrell Mitchell checks in at Redfern in December.
Mitchell had been linked to Souths since May. When he eventually signed a week into the new year, it merely confirmed what many had long predicted.
“Everyone says I lied about Latrell,” Richardson says. “I didn’t know we were going to have $1 million in our cap for Sam, which the NRL eventually gave us. When Sam went down, our first thought wasn’t to get a centre — it was to replace him.”
