‘Serial loser’ Joe Marler reveals Traitors’ agony was ‘similar’ to Springboks’ Rugby World Cup final defeat

Joe Marler has likened his gutting Celebrity Traitors banishment to losing the 2019 Rugby World Cup final to the Springboks.

The former England prop shot to stardom with his efforts in reaching the final stages of the BBC reality series, but was dramatically dumped out of the competition by Nick Mohammed – star of the hit series Ted Lasso.

Marler and Mohammed allied in a bid to win the competition, but in a shocking turn of events, the latter turned on the former over fears that the ex-Harlequins man was playing him.

Marler’s face said it all when Mohammed turned the card to evict him after they had plotted to reach the finale together.

Keep the outcome a secret

The pair have both stated that there are no hard feelings and that it was ‘just a game’, but when reflecting on how it unfolded, Marler explained how disappointed he was that he didn’t win it.

The 35-year-old obviously knew the final outcome and remained somewhat tight-lipped and was careful not to spoil the ending for his wife, Daisy.

“Because she’s a fan, she didn’t want to know,” Marler told The Good, The Bad and The Rugby podcast.

“She told me not to spoil it. She said: ‘Well, obviously, you did all right because you’ve been away for three weeks.’ Then I told her eight or nine different versions, and one of which was the truth, and then she had no idea until that final episode.

“Then she was like, ‘For f— sake, you did all that and didn’t even win’.”

Like most viewers, the ex-loosehead prop’s exit took Mrs Marler by surprise, so much so that she thought it may have been scripted, a notion that had Joe second-guessing how things unfolded.

“Yeah, the ending was great because had Nick and I gone in and stuck to the plan and won it, that would not have been as good an ending as it did,” he explained.

“That’s why Daisy turned around at the end of it and asked: ‘Was that scripted? It seemed like such a perfect ending that it was scripted.’

“And I went, ‘It wasn’t scripted in my head, I don’t know about others.’ So I asked was it scripted, and I was just none the wiser. And they all said: ‘No’, I asked the producers, and they said: ‘No, are you alright?’

“They explained to me that whatever the ending was, that was their starting point. So the story would have been different had Nick and I won it at the end.”

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Like losing the World Cup

Asked by the podcast presenter, Alex Payne, whether his look of astonishment when he saw his name was genuine and how he felt about it, Marler replied: “It was just like, ‘Oh f—‘. I didn’t see it coming.

“I thought we had it sussed, and this was the plan, this is how it was going to play out.

“Then, when I turned my name around, it was ‘Ah, f— it.’ and I just walked out thinking ‘How did I c— that up’.”

It was a familiar feeling for the retired prop after falling agonisingly close of winning rugby’s greatest prize in 2019 as England were beaten 32-12 by the Springboks in the final after beating the mighty All Blacks in the semis.

“It was a bit like 2019,” he said. “That’s what it felt like.

“This is f—ing great, dominated New Zealand, we’re going to go lift this trophy, this is great, and then all of a sudden South Africa are there, and you go, ‘You f—ing w—-rs’. That was a similar feeling, serial loser, really.”

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