Sam Burgess was brave but playing on in NRL Grand Final victory posed little risk of further damage

RABBITOHS hero Sam Burgess is scheduled to have surgery on Tuesday to repair his broken cheekbone.

Sam Burgess in tears as he hugs Alex Johnston after winning the 2014 NRL Grand Final between the South Sydney Rabbitohs and the Canterbury Bankstown Bulldogs at ANZ Stadium .Picture Gregg Porteous

RABBITOHS hero Sam Burgess is scheduled to have surgery on Tuesday to repair his broken cheekbone.

The star forward postponed treatment on Monday so he could continue to celebrate his team’s Grand Final victory with his South Sydney teammates.

Like Rabbitohs great John Sattler before him, Burgess’s courage to play a full 80 minutes with a suspected broken cheekbone will go down in rugby league folklore.

But unlike Sattler — whose jaw was broken in three places in the 1970 grand final against Manly — Burgess was not risking any further damage by remaining on the field, according to a leading sports medicine expert.

Despite the injury being intensely painful, Australasian College of Sports Physicians president Michael Jamieson said as long as Burgess could see clearly it was unlikely he would been injured further by another hit.

Sam Burgess’ bloodied face starts to swell up after the final whistle.

“These fractures of the cheek or zygomatic arch are relatively common in football and it’s usually the case a bloke will cop a knock and he won’t even know he has a fracture until the next day,’’ he said.

Dr Jamieson said “the bruising at the end of the game’’ suggested Burgess had a depressed cheek fracture but the doctor and medical staff at the game would not have known for sure at the time without scans.

“It’s not like a long bone fracture that can splinter through the skin [if it is hit again],’’ Dr Jamieson said.

“It’s not one of those things I would consider the risk of playing on to be huge.

He said the fact it occurred just after the opening kick-off in a grand final in front of more than 83,000 people certainly made it “dramatic’’.

“If you look at the serious consequences [of playing on] there’s not much.’’

Dr Jamieson said had Burgess’ vision been compromised he could have risked getting a secondary injury because he could not see the opposition clearly rather than suffering any further damage to his cheek.

Burgess was reported to have delayed surgery on Monday morning to join his team mates in post-match celebrations.

If scans do reveal a depressed fracture Dr Jamieson said surgeons would use a scalpel to lift the bone fragments back into position before placing a small steel plate over the area.

“For those guys [the surgeons] it’s bread and butter stuff,’’ he said.

Dr Jamieson’s comments came as Canterbury prop Tim Browne denied deliberately trying to make contact with Burgess’ cheek when he drove hard into the South’s front row while packing down in a second-half scrum.

Browne said he was “probably just testing out the metal plates I have in my forehead’’ to see if they worked, rather targeting the injured Bunny.

“It would have been soft anyway with the headgear,’’ Browne said.