Joe Marler on ‘poisoning’ the changing room and the moment he ‘grew up’ around Jonny May
Joe Marler on 'poisoning' the changing room and the moment he 'grew up' around Jonny May
Former Harlequins and England prop Joe Marler has reflected on leaving the game when he did, admitting that he misses playing dearly.
Appearing on The Good, The Bad & The Rugby podcast, alongside James Haskell and Jonny May, as well as host Alex Payne, Marler opened up to his former colleagues.
Explaining why he left when he did, the 35-year-old said: “I got to a point in my career where I absolutely loved playing for England, and the club team that I was part of (Harlequins); everyone had slowly retired or left, and numbers were dwindling.
“I hadn’t really engaged with the younger lot to make more connections, so I just ended up becoming that old f****** in the corner who was just miserable about everything.
“Then it sort of really dawned on me that I was poisoning the changing room, and I was like, ‘I can’t keep doing this to myself’. I was just going into work miserable.”
Noticing that the club that he had spent the entirety of his club career at was no longer the place he once loved, he decided to call it a day.
“Because I’d stopped with England, it was like, ‘I’m flogging a dead horse here. I need to get out of this.’
“I don’t think I’d made many friends with that coaching setup or that crop of players. Really, there was only me, Danny Care, Launchers (Joe Launchbury), and a couple of the South African boys that were left that I really connected with. And I was like, ‘I’m probably best off out of this for everyone involved’.”
‘You’ve changed’
Although Joe was now the “old f****** in the corner”, that wasn’t always the case. In fact, according to May, Marler was once a young speed merchant around the place. But as time went on, both his playing style and his personality changed.
His former England teammate was the one to point it out, saying one day: “You’ve changed” and adding: “You grew up”.
Expanding, Marler said: “There was a period in my life where I was like, ‘Oh, I’m not sure. Do I still want to be like, Jack the Lad, taking the p***’, the fun we had. Actually, I’ve got to take my career a bit more seriously.
“It wasn’t until I got in the England setup where Graham Rowntree was like, ‘70% of your involvements are carries or attacking and 30% rucks. If you want to play for England, it’s got to be the other way around’.
“Like your bread and butter is the scrum, and then all that flash stuff you’ve got to knock out. So then I concentrated on that. And that coincided around growing up.”
‘I always took my rugby seriously and tried my best’
“You get to a point where, if you want to become taken more seriously and become experienced, you’ve got to adapt and change,” added May.
“I always took my rugby seriously and tried my best, but I was loose and raw and just would mess around a lot like a kid on a holiday camp when I was at England.
“And then all of a sudden, you’re 24/25, people are moving on. You gotta grow up. And he (Marler) grew up a couple of years before me, and we drifted apart. I grew up again, matched him, and we got close again. Everybody’s got to go through life and adapt and grow.
“It’s funny seeing the boys now. It’s great, they’re having a great time these young group of players, Pollock, and they’re doing their thing, and it’s great to see them really like messing around in their hotel room.
“It takes me back to doing that with the lads. They’ll go through a process now of growing up and developing their game, and it’s a journey.
“But you come in as a 20-year-old, and you leave like 30 with the wife, family, and you grow up in that environment and change your game, and you develop personally as well.”
