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Joe Marler uncut: A mixed-zone interview as bizarre as headed assist
By Liam Heagney
Mixed zone interviews are regularly dull and stilted. The exhausted player who has been stopped for a few quick words usually just wants to keep on walking and make it out uninterrupted to his team’s bus… Then there is Joe Marler.
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He was in his element in midweek at England base camp in Le Touquet-Paris-Plage, hoping it would be officially confirmed on Friday evening that he would be starting the Rugby World Cup match versus Japan in Nice.
Steve Borthwick did pick him and the loosehead went on to enjoy two assists in England’s 34-12 Pool D win on Sunday night.
Within an hour of the full-time whistle, he was wheeling his small case through the mixed zone when he took up the invitation to chat with the waiting media, about a 10-strong group looking to hear chapter and verse from the loosehead.
What Marler had to say over the ensuing seven minutes was at times just as bizarre as ‘the header’ he produced to send Courtney Lawes scampering in for the game’s decisive try on 56 minutes. At other times, it was rather insightful and there were also some moments of pure cliché which he admitted he had to have it that way.
Rather than pick out one particular element and focus on that for an England news story, RugbyPass has written up the transcript of a type of quotable interview you seldom secure post-game. Here is Joe Marler uncut:
Marler: Hi guys, are you okay? Great to see you all.
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Journalist: Joe, you’re a prop.
Marler: I am, yeah. thanks for pointing that out.
Journalist: You got two assists tonight, over and above your job description. What do you make of that?
Marler: Well, it’s just what I have been practising for, these moments. I practiced it today with Dan Cole and Jamie George in activation (George walks by behind Marler chanting “Seagulls, Seagulls”). We were practicing our headers and I took huge inspiration from Robert de Zerbi’s mighty Seagulls yesterday doing a demolition job on United which is my son’s team so I take great pleasure in us doing the job. Four in a row, four Premier League games in a row. Only three teams in Premier League history have beaten Man United in four Premier League games in a row. Can you name them?
Journalist: Brighton.
Marler: Brighton is one.
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Journalist: QPR.
Marler: QPR? It’s Man City and Liverpool. But we have won nothing yet guys, which is quite apt and it brings me right back to us because we have won nothing yet. We have had two good victories, won in different circumstances and we are onto the next. See full circle. I like it. Are we done?
Journalist: You are starting to build momentum. Is there a sense that you can finesse the way you are playing?
Marler: Finesse? Why do you have to finesse it?
Journalist: That’s the question, do you need to?
Marler: You have just to win ’em. What did England do 20 years ago?
Journalist: They just won.
Marler: You find a way to win in a World Cup. We’ll keep trying and taking the lessons from each game. People like to say learnings but learnings isn’t a word. He [Ben Earl who happens to walk by] says learnings all the time. It’s not a word, is it? ‘We’ll take the learnings’. You’re wrong. So we will take the lessons and we will keep trying to finesse. Ultimately it is about the win. We’re not getting ahead of ourselves at all. You’ll get the same boring cliched answer from me, we will take one game at a time. We’ll rest up tonight, we’ll play a padel tournament tomorrow. Was I not meant to say that? Tough s***.
England PR: I’ve got Sincks [Kyle Sinckler].
Marler: You’ve got Sincks? Oh my god. I’ve got Steve (Borthwick); it’s me and Steve. Jesus Christ. So yeah, and we will look to Chile on Tuesday.
Journalist: What did England do 20 years ago, you’re alluding to their style of play 20 years ago?
Marler: Well you talk about style of play, don’t you? A lot of people did. Particularly you lot [the media], who I love by the way. Kitso, love your work. You tell me.
Journalist: You talked about it.
Marler: Yeah, they went a couple of phases, didn’t they? Jonny (Wilkinson) slotted some penalties, slotted some drop goals; they won ugly. A lot of that tournament they won ugly but we don’t talk about that now, do we? We talk about them winning. You forget about how you did it. South Africa, you don’t talk about them getting pumped in the first game (in 2019) against New Zealand. You talk about them pumping us in the final and then lifting the trophy. That is ultimately what it is about. So we will continue to work on our game to improve and make sure we have got a better chance of winning those games.
Journalist: Steve mentioned 03 and 07 in his press conference on Friday night about how few tries England actually scored against the tier-one teams. Has he spoken to you about ’03 and ’07?
Marler: Yeah, he has used a lot of his experiences as a player in context with this tournament and ultimately it’s about winning.
Journalist: But there is always a team in a World Cup that builds that you don’t maybe look at at the start, but then come through at the back end of the tournament. You can be that team… can’t you?
Marler: Like I’d love to be that team, I’d love us to be that team where you build and build and build and then you’re peaking. I’d love us to go on and win the World Cup. That’s why we are here. We will have to just concentrate on taking the lesson, learning from them and trying and improve and keep building on that and taking one game at a time. That’s so boring, isn’t it, but literally what else could you do? If I stood here and went ‘We’re not thinking about Chile, we’re not thinking about Samoa, we’re trying to work out who we will be playing in the quarters’, you lot would be like, ‘Oh my god, this lot, they are not taking it seriously. Arrogant. These arrogant sods’ and then we would live up to reputation and then it would just fuel more and all that but we’re not. It’s one game at a time and we’ll see how we go.
Journalist: How do you get in the mindset for a game like Chile who are largely amateur players?
Marler: Are they? So what was the question again?
Journalist: What kind of mindset do you take into that match against a team where you are expected to win heavily, win by a large amount?
Marler: The mindset would be ‘we need to win the game’.
Journalist: What do you make of Chile as an opposition?
Marler: It’s a really patronising thing. They put up a hell of a performance, very passionate. I was looking at the map and I can’t work it out. Am I not allowed to say this? I can’t work out why is it so thin… does anyone have a history on that one?
Journalist: The Andes.
Marler: Yes, but it is so thin… Last one then.
Journalist: Can I ask how Steve goes about analysing a game? What is it, sort of four points he will give you? How has he sort of condensed not the learnings but the lessons?
Marler: Not the learnings because that is not the word.
Journalist: How does he give you the lessons? What is the format?
Marler: That’s your last question?!
Another Journalist: Can we go back to South American geo-politics?
Marler: It’s a combination of stats, player input, how we felt during the game, how we felt during previous games and we’ll look at the opposition, look at the trends of what they were good or weak at and then later in the week we will narrow it down to focusing on ourselves and what can try to impose and that is the general format.
England's a threat, however Joes going to have to do a lot less banter come the quarters as I expect them to have to play Fiji in the quarter who lost the game against Wales rather than Wales won it. Fiji will destroy you if giving them a half chance.
Nothing bizarre in this interview, he is talking to the media who want to write sensational stories about demise, failure, discontent and ineptitude in English rugby. None of them turn up to Japanese or Chilean press conferences, none of them, TV pundits and commentators included, do an ounce of research or analysis on the rugby itself and have very limited knowledge of the opposition outside the tier 1 nations. The media is interested in writing nonsense and appears baffled when faced with someone who sends it straight back at them.