A successful man-management lesson? Possibly …
Yesterday Quins prop Joe Marler was widely quoted in the press talking about how things have been since he re-joined the England training squad towards the end of his six-week ban after being re-carded for ‘clearing out’ TJ Ioane at a ruck with a deliberate shoulder-shot to the head, allegedly not long after receiving an elbow in the face from the Sale forward.
The rugby union fraternity delights in its myths about the cultural differences between – in former England back row forward Mickey Skinner’s famous phrase – the ‘piano shifters’ (the forwards) and the ‘girls’ (the backs) and indeed the notion that all those that ply their trade in the front row of the scrum are a species apart [have a screw loose perhaps, if only because nobody in their right mind would ever want to play there?]
How often over the years have we heard former threequarters now working in the media comment, as a scrum collapses and has to be reset for the umpteenth time, “I’ve obviously got no idea what on earth is going on in there, but …” as if the divide between themselves and the subterranean world of props and hookers is unfathomable?
I’m not going there today, despite the belief of many that Marler is a living example of the stereotypical ‘pantomime villain’ prop who – when the proverbial red mist comes down – can turn into a worrying liability for any team he plays for because of his ill-discipline and quirky personality.
In fact – and these things are not mutually exclusive – he’s an intelligent man who has worked diligently on his game and thinks ‘outside the box’. Above all, he tells it as he sees it and yesterday he had some interesting things to say on the subject of man-management.
Playing elite professional rugby is a short and unforgiving career. It is every player’s dream to represent his country but everyone that does knows that he is one bad game, one injury, one indiscretion, one unedifying impression or coach’s prejudice away from returning to Palookaville.
Ask Danny Cipriani, still revered today by some fans and journalists as a ‘lost Messiah’, but who was cast into the international wilderness three or four seasons ago.
England head coach Eddie Jones, a smart guy universally acknowledged as world class, is a Marmite figure. There are as many who regard him as a blot on the landscape as think the sun shines out of his backside albeit – declaring an interest here – I tend towards the latter view. He shoots from the hip and doesn’t mind whom he offends and everyone knows it.
Last week Joe Marler was under no illusion that he was going to be welcomed back into the England camp as a returning hero. He was expecting a ‘beasting’ and he got one. He told the Daily Telegraph’s Daniel Scholfield:
“I’ve been cited twice in the past six weeks and spent nine weeks on the sidelines. There was no real argument with Eddie, or saying ‘actually Eddie I disagree with you’ … He was very stern and made it very clear where I stand … It is even harder when you have coaches or directors of rugby who don’t give you a straight answer and you are trying to work out why [you] haven’t been picked or what is he thinking here or what is he thinking there.
If a bloke comes up to you and says ‘You are not doing this good enough or you have to stop doing this’, you know what to do then …”
Jones has not only put Marler and James Haskell through a greater flogging in training than the rest of the squad – Haskell incidentally also having returned from a (four-week) ban for a red card ‘high tackle’, having previously been sent to the bin for fighting with Marler in a Wasps v Quins game and then, after being admonished by the referee, trying to throttle him when Marler squirted him with a water bottle – but made them room together.
Marler told Scholfield that the latter ordeal had been almost as harrowing as the former, describing it as “an experience in itself”, but you can bet your bottom dollar that through their adversity in camp Haskell and Marler have not only buried any residual mutual resentment but ganged together to get their heads down and thereby hopefully back into their head coach’s good books.
