I think Burgess could be making a big, BIG mistake joining the NRL at such a young and inexperienced age. Bad enough that he seems to be making a very large number of defensive errors. Worse still that he seems to specialise in the kind of spectacularly cataclysmic blunders Francis Meli's career was dogged by.
If he makes half the number of mistakes in the NRL they'll bust him down to the lower leagues where a reputation for "howlers" is the devil's job to shake free.
I don't mind cockiness in youth. But cockiness without first doing the job you're being PAID to do is a recipe for disaster. Right now Burgess looks like a player who has already accepted his own greatness. Everything he touches seems to turn to gold and the errors he makes have largely been without consequence.
Unfortunately, the harsh brutalities of the real world have the annoying habit of kicking you in the nuts just when you think you've got this life game licked. At some point Burgess is going to hit the wall. In SL the crash might be little more than a mild bump. In the NRL it'll be whilst travelling at a hundred miles an hour. How he deals with the inevitable carnage will, I think, set the tone for the rest of his career.
. He's still a very good player though
