Sam Burgess and Tariq Sims poised for a finals footy forward battle for the ages
SAM Burgess says there’s not truth to the yarn going around about him and Tariq Sims but the Rabbitohs enforcer is relishing the chance to continue his battle with the Dragons hitman writes PAUL KENT.
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THE story was told with such authority it had to be true.
It got delivered with just the right amount of reverence and humour, the way the best stories are always told. The appropriate action was to get right on the phone and call Sam Burgess and get his recollection and turn it into a thousand words for a Saturday morning.
He was driving when the call came and his response was short.
“There’s not even an inch of truth in that,” he said.
“I get on really well with him.”
He is talking about Tariq Sims, the St George Illawarra edge player who is aggressive and big and prone to acts of intimidation.
“Not even an inch?” Burgess was asked.
“No,” he said, before a small pause. “But it sounds like something I’d do.”
A dozen phone calls were made in pursuit of the story before Burgess finally answered.
Its beauty is the obligation among the good big men in this game, like Burgess, that is uncommon to the rest of us. Theirs is a code not necessarily of aggression, but of expectation.
They do things that do not make much sense in an office environment or average society.
They do them not because they are slightly crazy but because they need them like they need oxygen. This need puts their teammates’ welfare ahead of their own so they are prepared to commit acts of small aggression in protection of those teammates.
The definition of a leader.
For putting themselves in harm’s way they earn their teammates trust and loyalty.
So it goes that in some long ago game Tariq Sims put a shot on one of the Burgess twins, George or Tom, that might or might not have been late. Big brother Sam did what leaders often do and got protective.
He went after Sims with a particular fury.
It was not an uncommon reaction. Burgess certainly has a history with the Sims brothers.
“The biggest run-in I’ve had is with Ashton Sims,” Burgess said.
“We used to battle it out on the field.”
Ashton is the oldest of the three Sims brothers and plays now for Toronto Wolfpack. Younger brother Tariq plays for St George Illawarra, who play Souths on Saturday night. The youngest, Korbin, joins the Dragons next season, the numbers beginning to square up.
The story goes that after the game Sam was still so heated at Tariq’s late shot he headed to the opposition changeroom and dropped a challenge at the door for Sims to meet him, in the old pub sense, shirts off outside.
Burgess denies this outright.
“Not even an inch of truth.”
Inside the Rabbitohs’ video review this week the coaching staff went through the Dragons’ recent games, identifying plays and various threats from the Dragons players. Names got mentioned. The Rabbitohs contributed.
Throughout the whole review Burgess never once muttered Sims’ name or possible repercussions if Sims ran the ball in his general vicinity.
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“Never discussed it,” said someone in the room.
Part of the reason could have been there is simply nothing there, or that Sam was keeping it together after coach Anthony Seibold’s disappointment at Sam’s loss of discipline against Melbourne last week, which got spoken about.
“He looks at opposition players, he’s had run-ins with a fair few people. There’s a few he doesn’t like,” said one Rabbitoh.
Nelson Asofa-Solomona is one. Will Chambers another.
“But Tariq isn’t one he mentioned this week. He does it because he loves to challenge himself.”
Burgess is not alone in this special world. Most teams have their own enforcers. Asofa-Solomona and Chambers among them, which explains things.
Even the Dragons have their own protector.
James Graham feels a personal responsibility to account for the biggest threat in the opposition.
It surprises no-one that he and Burgess are friends.
They each have a mutual regard for the work the other is capable of, an admiration borne out of understanding the job each other does.
In their world it makes perfect sense that every time they play each other they find the other and pound each other so, often, one will end the game in less than perfect health.
As such, and in respect to their game tonight, their friendship cools this week.
“We don’t speak when we play each other,” Burgess said.
Burgess and Graham are in a couple of group chats on their various phone apps and regularly engage. Not this week.
“We keep pretty quiet for the week,” Burgess said.
The two have a solid history of coming together.
Graham broke Burgess’s cheekbone in the first tackle of the 2014 grand final and nearly knocked himself out in the process. Both have inflicted damage to each other in games before and since.
Unfortunately they are such modest men their nature is to talk down their confrontations rather than celebrate them. It contributed to the difficulty of verifying the Sims story.
Australia is a modest nation. So is England, where Burgess and Graham hail from.
There is a thought in America, the home of great sport and great sportswriting, but where modesty is less valued, that a sport is only ever as strong as its literature. Boxing and baseball dominated the first half of the 20th century on the back of the legends of Jack Dempsey and Joe Louis and Babe Ruth and Joe DiMaggio and the words that flowed about them.
All the best sportswriters wrote boxing and baseball. As times changed so did the coverage, so did the sports.
Golf emerged on the back of Ben Hogan and Arnold Palmer and a morality tale in every US Masters. American football grew to overtake baseball as the great American past-time, boxing disappeared with Muhammad Ali.
The strength of writing changed with the strength of the sport.
And sometimes along the way the narrative drifted into mythology. Did Gene Tunney really get a long count? Was Babe Ruth really pointing to the stands before he knocked the ball out of the park?
Sometimes, the best things in place of a well told story are a well meant falsehood.
Steve Waugh never actually said, “You’ve just dropped the World Cup”, but we want to believe it.
Much of this changes in this era of 24-hour news cycles and gossip masquerading as news, though.
There is not the tolerance for it, no matter how well intended. The fun isn’t in it, anymore.
It is not completely unexpected that Tariq Sims picked up the mantle laid down by Ashton’s move to Toronto, or that Burgess has responded. Sims sees himself in the same light as Burgess, a protector.
It is also expected that off the park they want to make as little fuss of it as possible.
So it was denied.
But the story was first volunteered out of the Rabbitohs and, in the fact checking that came with each call to a Rabbitoh, more than one vouched for its validity.
“I couldn’t say around the changeroom,” said another witness, “but it was fairly vocal when they played.
“That was happening quite often. Sam’s bit of a hot-head on the field.
“And because of the brother thing … three brothers and three brothers, that was always on.”
It deserves to live.
Originally published as Sam Burgess and Tariq Sims poised for a finals footy forward battle for the ages
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