Egged on by the English press earlier this year to pick Burgess, head coach Stuart Lancaster is now being pilloried for doing so.
None of this is a surprise as Burgess was always a hospital pass. He switched codes in October last year - giving himself less than a year to successfully convert.
Injury knocked a few months off that and then there was confusion and lack of agreement as to his best position. Bath reckoned he was a blindside, England were thinking midfield.
Any objective assessment of Burgess would have been to say he's not ready for the World Cup. He hadn't done enough to warrant selection and yet everyone knew, surely, that the assessment was never going to be objective.
Burgess was the light, Lancaster the moth and once he'd made the decision to include Burgess in the 31, it seemed inevitable that the coach would then pick him for the biggest game in England's recent history.
And that's the problem with high profile, league converts: big money is invested and everyone feels compelled to get value for it. Somehow coaches think that people who have played league professionally are only ever a couple of games from conquering rugby.
Yet they never are. Long serving players who have slogged their guts out for an age, can't help but be mystified by the fast tracking of league stars.
It wasn't so different with the All Blacks at the 2011 World Cup. Williams wasn't quite ready either - but he was a good enough athlete to get by. He'd also been in rugby for three years.
But he generated a bit of ill feeling among his peers - or certainly didn't fit in the way he does now. It wasn't necessarily Williams' fault, but he came with profile and expectation and some of his teammates struggled to equate that with the All Black ethos.
It took Williams another season at least to win universal peer respect and show his true capability.
Folau was good when he first played in 2013, surviving on instinct, professionalism and desire.
He is twice the player now. Experience and familiarity have allowed him to use his full athletic portfolio.
Whatever their respective histories, Williams and Folau are destined to have a major say on who wins this World Cup.
Williams is in the best head space he's been according to the All Black coaches and definitely playing like it. Folau is expected to recover from an ankle injury and be one of the undisputed stars of this tournament.
It always felt like England had the foresight to see how influential both Williams and Folau were going to be at the World Cup and then opt to try to create their own version in Burgess.
The thinking wasn't flawed, just the timing. It has taken patience and perseverance to get Williams and Folau to this point. But the knives are out for Lancaster so the impression will be given that New Zealand and Australia were able to seamlessly transition two of the best from the NRL into their national teams and England weren't.
Burgess looks like just one more ill-planned, bad idea - further evidence of how far England trail behind New Zealand and Australia.
