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England prop Marler mischievously tweets 'let's talk' to American MLR team

(Photo by David Rogers/The RFU Collection via Getty Images)

England prop Joe Marler has mischievously hinted that he fancies a switch at some stage to Major League Rugby in America, the tournament where his old Harlequins captain Chris Robshaw now plays for San Diego Legion.

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Loosehead Marler has recently been in a rich vein of form, helping attack-drilled Harlequins reach the Gallagher Premiership semi-finals after he made himself unavailable for the Guinness Six Nations campaign with England due to the bubble safety restrictions surrounding the England camp. 

The soon-to-be 31-year-old likely has numerous years of frontline rugby in England ahead of him but he has curiously taken to Twitter and responded to a recent tweet posted by The Rugby Network, the website drumming up publicity surrounding the fledgling league in America where every match can be watched online for free.

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Fans of the Houston Sabercats were asked to vote for their dream signing and after it was announced that they most fancied Marler having a stint playing in Texas, the player himself tweeted: “Let’s talk…”

The Sabercats have been enduring a difficult 2021 season as they are currently bottom of the Western Conference following just two wins in eleven outings and they were beaten 28-9 in their most recent match last weekend by Austin Gilgronis. 

The American League is growing in popularity as a destination for high profile recruits, especially from England. Former Test level full-back Ben Foden was the signing that broke the mould, the ex-Northampton player linking up with Rugby United New York, an alliance covered at length in the well-received RugbyPass documentary Foden: Stateside. 

Having finished his career at Harlequins, ex-England skipper Robshaw headed to America for the 2021 season as did seasoned referee JP Doyle, the popular official who was unfortunately made redundant in a cost-cutting exercise by the RFU last summer. Now Marler has mischievously hinted he too could be tempted into a Stateside switch. 

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Flankly 1 hour ago
'Absolute madness': Clive Woodward rips into Borthwick in wake of NZ loss

Borthwick is supposed to be the archetypical conservative coach, the guy that might not deliver a sparkling, high-risk attacking style, but whose teams execute the basics flawlessly. And that's OK, because it can be really hard to beat teams that are rock solid and consistent in the rugby equivalent of "blocking and tackling".


But this is why the performance against NZ is hard to defend. You can forgive a conservative, back-to-basics team for failing to score tons of tries, because teams like that make up for it with reliability in the simple things. They can defend well, apply territorial pressure, win the set piece battles, and take their scoring chances with metronomic goal kicking, maul tries and pick-and-go goal line attacks.


The reason why the English rugby administrators should be on high alert is not that the English team looked unable to score tries, but that they were repeatedly unable to close out a game by executing basic, coachable skills. Regardless of how they got to the point of being in control of their destiny, they did get to that point. All that was needed was to be world class at things that require more training than talent. But that training was apparently missing, and the finger has to point at the coach.


Borthwick has been in the job for nearly two years, a period that includes two 6N programs and an RWC campaign. So where are the solid foundations that he has been building?

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