England coach Stuart Lancaster is in damage control and trying to save his job after the hosts were eliminated from their home World Cup last weekend.

Burgess has been at the centre of all the attention since well before the tournament, earning a spot in the 31-man squad despite having just two Tests to his name and less than a year of rugby experience.

Now he has paid the price for the intense scrutiny, dropped from the game-day squad to play against Uruguay on Saturday night (Sunday morning AEDT).

There were accusations of a divide in the squad over perceived preferential treatment to Burgess.

Certain players felt that Burgess' elevation into the squad as a centre at the expense of Luther Burrell was due to the coaches' fixation with the former rugby league star.

England No. 8 took to social media to deny that he questioned Burgess' selection at a question and answer function last week.

There is speculation Burgess will quit rugby and join Super League club Leeds after the tournament, just over a year after he led the South Sydney Rabbitohs to a historic NRL premiership.

"I've not had any conversations with him about a move to rugby league at all," Lancaster said.

"Genuinely, 100 per cent I didn't know that story was out there. My last conversation with him was about him going back to Bath. He can't wait to get stuck into the Premiership.

"He feels he's made good strides as a player and he wants to continue to improve. Bath will be delighted to have him back and I can't see anything changing in that regard."

Burgess has been the target of intense criticism since he was promoted to England's starting side against Wales two weeks ago.

Burgess was solid, but got caught out in defensive lapses at times. However, England lost the game while Burgess was on the bench after he was substituted.

He was on the bench for England's 33-13 loss to Australia last weekend and didn't make an impact when he was injected in the second half.

The Wallabies overpowered England in a match that saw them crash out of their own tournament - the first time in World Cup history that the host nation has failed to progress through the group stage.

"Sam wasn't picked because I want to have a look at this combination for this game," Lancaster said.

England team:

1-Mako Vunipola, 2-Tom Youngs, 3-Dan Cole, 4-Joe Launchbury, 5-Geoff Parling, 6-James Haskell, 7-Chris Robshaw (captain), 8-Nick Easter; 9-Danny Care, 10-George Ford, 11-Jack Nowell, 12-Owen Farrell, 13-Henry Slade, 14-Anthony Watson, 15-Alex Goode.

Replacements: 16-Jamie George, 17-Joe Marler, 18-David Wilson, 19-George Kruis, 20-Tom Wood, 21-Richard Wigglesworth, 22-Jonathan Joseph, 23-Mike Brown.