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'He stamped on my head because I held on to his leg. It was my own fault'

England's Joe Marler has history with Argentina

Joe Marler insists England will match the passion of Argentina as he reflects on the incident that produced two cards when he last faced the Pumas.

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Eddie Jones’ men continue their World Cup quest on Saturday aiming to secure the triumph that could guarantee their passage into the quarter-final where they are likely to meet Australia.

Marler’s most recent outing against Argentina was staged at Twickenham three years ago when he was the victim of a stamp by replacement prop Enrique Pieretto Heiland.

Heiland was shown a red card and subsequently banned for seven weeks, but Marler admits his own role in the incident that resulted in him being sin-binned.

“Argentina are very passionate. I wouldn’t say they are niggly, they are just an extremely passionate nation and I guess so are we, so it gets a bit heated like that,” Marler said.

“He (Heiland) stamped on my head because I held on to his leg. It was my own fault. But you can’t stamp on people any more. And that was the right call. It was also the right call for me to get yellowed.”

Marler has acted as England’s senior loosehead in the absence of Mako Vunipola, who made an aborted comeback from a hamstring injury during the warm-up Tests and has only just recovered.

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The number one jersey is hotly contested with Marler and Vunipola taken to Japan alongside Ellis Genge, the rampaging young Leicester forward nicknamed “Baby Rhino”.

“There are three guys going for two shirts, so that doesn’t work. It’s great to have Mako back and he’s been in training for the last couple of weeks anyway,” Marler said.

“He’s back fully fit and he brings world-class experience and talent into that role. So….I’ve enjoyed my time!

“I’m determined to give as much as I can to this group to help us win the game on Saturday.”

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Eddie Jones on Thursday names his team for the first of two pivotal Pool C encounters – France follow Argentina seven days later – and Vunipola is sure to be present in some capacity.

“Mako needs to be the best version of himself and we know what he is capable of,” scrum coach Neal Hatley said.

“He is a 50-cap player and we know what he brings as a ball carrier and the influence he has defensively on the team.

“But Joe Marler and Ellis Genge have been going exceptionally well and we want that competition within the team to create pressure on the players to work harder and produce more.

“What we produce on the weekend will be a product of what we do in training and Mako is going to have to work hard.”

Watch: Keveri livid at penalty

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J
JW 3 hours ago
Does South Africa have a future in European competition?

I rated Lowe well enough to be an AB. Remember we were picking the likes of George Bridge above such players so theres no disputing a lot of bad decisions have been made by those last two coaches. Does a team like the ABs need a finicky winger who you have to adapt and change a lot of your style with to get benefit from? No, not really. But he still would have been a basic improvement on players like even Savea at the tail of his career, Bridge, and could even have converted into the answer of replacing Beauden at the back. Instead we persisted with NMS, Naholo, Havili, Reece, all players we would have cared even less about losing and all because Rieko had Lowe's number 11 jersey nailed down.


He was of course only 23 when he decided to leave, it was back in the beggining of the period they had started retaining players (from 2018 onwards I think, they came out saying theyre going to be more aggressive at some point). So he might, all of them, only just missed out.


The main point that Ed made is that situations like Lowe's, Aki's, JGP's, aren't going to happen in future. That's a bit of a "NZ" only problem, because those players need to reach such a high standard to be chosen by the All Blacks, were as a country like Ireland wants them a lot earlier like that. This is basically the 'ready in 3 years' concept Ireland relied on, versus the '5 years and they've left' concept' were that player is now ready to be chosen by the All Blacks (given a contract to play Super, ala SBW, and hopefully Manu).


The 'mercenary' thing that will take longer to expire, and which I was referring to, is the grandparents rule. The new kids coming through now aren't going to have as many gp born overseas, so the amount of players that can leave with a prospect of International rugby offer are going to drop dramatically at some point. All these kiwi fellas playing for a PI, is going to stop sadly.


The new era problem that will replace those old concerns is now French and Japanese clubs (doing the same as NRL teams have done for decades by) picking kids out of school. The problem here is not so much a national identity one, than it is a farm system where 9 in 10 players are left with nothing. A stunted education and no support in a foreign country (well they'll get kicked out of those countries were they don't in Australia).


It's the same sort of situation were NZ would be the big guy, but there weren't many downsides with it. The only one I can think was brought up but a poster on this site, I can't recall who it was, but he seemed to know a lot of kids coming from the Islands weren't really given the capability to fly back home during school xms holidays etc. That is probably something that should be fixed by the union. Otherwise getting someone like Fakatava over here for his last year of school definitely results in NZ being able to pick the cherries off the top but it also allows that player to develop and be able to represent Tonga and under age and possibly even later in his career. Where as a kid being taken from NZ is arguably going to be worse off in every respect other than perhaps money. Not going to develop as a person, not going to develop as a player as much, so I have a lotof sympathy for NZs case that I don't include them in that group but I certainly see where you're coming from and it encourages other countries to think they can do the same while not realising they're making a much worse experience/situation.

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