Rugby World Cup 2015: Sam Burgess holds no fear from Matt Giteau despite size of the task

​MATT Giteau says he won’t be worried about giving away 30kg to Sam Burgess if they meet in the Wallabies’ massive clash with England on Sunday.

​MATT Giteau likens Sam Burgess to Sonny Bill Williams on a rugby field but says he won’t be worried about giving away 30kg to the ex-Rabbitoh if they meet in the Wallabies’ clash with England on Sunday at Twickenham.

It shapes as a case of little old bull versus giant young bull in the midfield on Sunday morning, with 85kg Giteau likely to play his 98th Test up against 115kg Burgess, in his sixth.

It is a match of huge proportions with England now having to beat Australia to stay in the tournament after their shock loss to Wales.

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For Giteau, he’ll likely have a rival of huge proportions as well but as far as the 32-year-old is concerned, that’s pretty standard.

“I think everyone has size on me. That’s nothing new,” Giteau said.

“For me, I’m used to always playing guys that are bigger than me. It’s just a matter of trying to deal with that and looking for my own areas that I can improve on or how I can impose myself on the game. That’s what I focus on.”

England and Australia won’t name their sides until Thursday but even in defeat Burgess probably did enough to start against the Wallabies.

Remarkably, the match labelled by Clive Woodward as England’s World Cup final come early will fall almost a year to the day after Burgess led Souths to an NRL premiership in 2014.

“Whether he starts or not, he has an impact,” Giteau said.

“He came off the bench against Fiji and I thought he added a lot there with his offloading game. “Just because of his size, he attracts defenders.

“He’s an athlete and he played a bit of backrow for Bath. I think he understands the rucks and the style of game that they’re trying to play. I think he adds a lot to. He’s very similar to Sonny, not in the way they play because they may play a little different, but they are both great athletes.”

Giteau defended mostly at five-eighth against Fiji and would not shirk front-line duties against Burgess.

“Defensively Gits is really dogged. He puts his body on the line 100 per cent of the time so it will be a great match up,” backs coach Stephen Larkham said.

“He’s certainly not going to take a backwards step and I’d have to look at his tackle percentage, but it’s fairly impressive and certainly something to be proud of. In saying that, Sam Burgess offers a fair bit in attack, particularly with his hard carries and his offloads. He’s a big, strong guy.”

Like Williams, Burgess’ ability to ride low contact, get his hands free and offload is a key strength.

But to try and wrap the ball up risks getting bumped off, particularly for smaller rivals.

Giteau said the best way to defend against offloaders is unrelenting teamwork.

“You can’t have someone knocking off because say that guy tackles there and I worry about the next thing out there, the offload, because you’ve just switched off,” Giteau said.

The game will be a lot different to the last Wallabies Test at Twickenham, on the Spring Tour last year. Giteau said he and Drew Mitchell were drinking beer in the stands.

But his last game at the venue was in May, leading Toulon to a third straight Heineken Cup win over Clermont.

One old Toulon teammate, Jonny Wilkinson, heaped praise on Giteau in a UK Sunday paper.

“Matt is very much a once-in-a-generation player,” Wilkinson told the Daily Mail.

“He is old enough now with the experience he has to take the big decisions. He is enormously solid but with the power and explosiveness to change a game. That is normally a job reserved for younger guys.

“He is at an age that he is now where he has the leadership stuff but the youth too — the perfect combination. Also, very, very rarely does he do anything wrong and never has a bad game.”

Originally published as Rugby World Cup 2015: Sam Burgess holds no fear from Matt Giteau despite size of the task