The warning Mike Brown has for ‘blurred lines’ Harlequins about ‘cash cow’ Marcus Smith
Harlequins legend Mike Brown, inset, has been talking about Marcus Smith's situation with the struggling Londoners
Harlequins legend Mike Brown has warned the struggling English club not to get complacent about having star player Marcus Smith under contract until 2028.
The soon-to-be 27-year-old out-half has suffered this season playing in an underwhelming side. Smith has been a winner in just two of his seven PREM Rugby appearances, suffering huge defeats against the likes of Northampton, Sale, Bristol and Exeter.
Cut adrift in eighth place on the table with just 10 points, 23 points behind Bristol in the fourth and final play-off spot after nine matches, this lack of results at club level with Harlequins has hindered Smith’s international prospects.
Up against Sale’s George Ford and Northampton’s Fin Smith for recognition at No.10, Smith featured only once in England’s four-match Autumn Nations Series – playing out of position at full-back in the win over Fiji.
‘Why not go and get a s*** load of money in France’
It’s a situation that doesn’t sit well with Brown, the retired 17-year Harlequins veteran last capped at Test level in 2018.
Appearing on the latest edition of The Good, The Bad & The Rugby, he believed the London club was in dire need of a major overhaul and warned that Smith could eventually get frustrated and quit.
“His biggest driver, I know for a fact, is winning for Quins and playing for England,” explained Brown during the course of an extensive 87-minute interview.
“He is not going to win anything with Quins at the moment unless they do something unbelievable like 2021. But if we are talking right now, he is not going to get that driver; he is not playing for England at the moment, so that is gone. So what is the next thing? Why not go and get a s*** load of money in France, I don’t know.
“If you take someone’s main motivators, drivers away, they are not just going to continue getting their head kicked in, losing every week. They are going to look at other things that are going to motivate them.
“It’s a short career as well. With the Quins hat on, hopefully he doesn’t (leave) because if they lose him, they are in the s***. They really are because he is leading them with that passion, that commitment, that fight that they need from everyone and he is essentially the cash cow.
“So hopefully Quins aren’t getting complacent thinking he is locked in until 2028 because someone with a lot of money will come and take him straight out of that.”
Brown went on to explain why Harlequins’ rotten results have affected Smith’s selection chances with Steve Borthwick’s England.
“He [Smith] has an unbelievable point of difference compared to the other two [Ford and Fin Smith], but the other two are tearing down trees with performances, especially in an England jersey, and they probably fit the mould of England more than Marcus at the moment, but this (situation with Harlequins) doesn’t help.
“He outwardly shows his passion and commitment to the club. He tries so hard, sometimes to his detriment, because as we know, the harder you try, the worse it gets sometimes. But for me, he is one of the ones who is fighting for that shirt and showing his commitment to the club compared to others.
“The thing that sits bad with me is he is fighting for his England jersey; that is so important to him and rightly so, but we all know that the players who get back in the team, if they are not in it, are the ones in the successful teams and Quins aren’t at the moment.
“So how is he going to go up against a George Ford who has done so well in an England shirt. Fin Smith is in a Saints team that is absolutely carving and playing unbelievably.
“George has the credit in the bank and been world-class in an England shirt, so Marcus is fighting against that in a struggling Quins team not able to put the best of himself on the field, carrying a lot of weight on his shoulders because he is the golden boy at Quins, but he needs players around him if he going to do something. He can’t do it all on his own.”
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Before discussing Smith’s difficult situation at the PREM Rugby club, Brown rounded on the coaching structure and suggested that winning the title in 2021 was not a good thing in the long run for the Londoners.
“I look at it from the outside as someone who has been there 17 years, my whole adult life, and that makes me feel sad as it’s an important place to me even though I am not around it anymore and am a long way on the outside.
“I put a post on LinkedIn about how winning in 2021 was not a good thing for the club, as cracks had started to appear before that, and that papered over a lot. Then it just continued, and you get to what we are now – and it all starts with that plan.
“Are the right people putting that plan together, and then how does everything else align and feed into that vision. It just feels at the moment, everything is just so scattergun.
“Look at the coaching structure, for example, and this is not bagging any coaches in there or anything like that, but they have got six coaches, two of which are consultants… one is to help with the attack, so what does that say about Nick Evans.
“Another is Toby Booth, who is actually essentially a head coach. So, who is the head coach because Toby Booth ain’t going in to be anything else, in my opinion. From the outside, that’s blurred lines, muddled, what’s the plan around that and why do you need six coaches?
“For me, it’s too many voices, but then the consultants are only in half a week. If you are trying to drive accountability from the top down, how are you holding coaches to account when two are consultants? How can you hold two consultants to account? You can’t because they are not really yours.
“And then also, if the attack doesn’t go well, who is taking accountability for that, Nick or Sean Long, who has come in? If I’m Nick, I’m going, ‘Well, I’m not taking accountability for that.
“That might be one of the issues; maybe it is time to get a proper plan in place to get sustainable success. Do they want that, or do they just want to be entertainers? Some we’ll win, some we’ll lose. I don’t know.
“It will take time; it’s not a quick fix. Look at Man United, they still haven’t got the right people, that’s still going on. It just shows how long it can rumble on if you neglect certain things and you don’t get the right people in to do the job. And are they looking for the right people, which I would probably argue aren’t if it’s the same people that are in there.”
