'I'll tell you for a fact, if that happened at Twickenham, we'd be getting called 'English this and English that'
England prop Ellis Genge has spoken out against what he believes is the hypocrisy of hostility being acceptable at Murrayfield.
Yesterday England alleged that one of their backroom staff had been hit on the head with a plastic beer bottle when the team bus offloaded the squad at Murrayfield.
The SRU apologised for the incident although there is no evidence to suggest the bottle had been directed at the member of staff by anyone in the crowd; rather it appears a gust of wind had blown it off a gantry.
Abuse had been hurled at the English team however as they got off the bus and the failure of the crowd in the stadium to remain quiet during Owen Farrell’s kicks irked England head coach Eddie Jones.
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WATCH: Ireland head coach Andy Farrell and captain Johnny Sexton press conference following their victory over Wales in the Six Nations at the Aviva Stadium in Dublin.
“It was an old fashioned Calcutta Cup game, swirling wind and an aggressive crowd without manners,” said Jones. “I thought you were supposed to show kickers respect.”
Now loosehead Genge says that if something similar had happened in England's home stadium, there would have been far more of made of it in the media and online.
“I’ll tell you for a fact, if that happened at Twickenham – which it never does – we’d be getting called “English this and English that, can’t believe the lack of respect from the English, X, Y and Z,” he said.
“But it happens away at Murrayfield and everyone is happy about it, saying ‘it’s good for the game’.”
Following the match the England front-rower had taken aim at media critics.
“We had a bump in the road last week and everyone was writing us off, saying we weren’t good enough, saying that our coach should be sacked and that the boys were a different team from the World Cup,” Genge told BBC Sport.
“It doesn’t sting but it’s classic isn’t it? You’ve got a lot of sausages saying things that just come to their head and what are they on about? We go out and win in Scotland away in the rain and now everyone’s singing our praises."
Additional reporting PA
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Don't think Tom Curry should have been selected. Whatever the protocols say, if he's had two concussions this season already, and was knocked out cold two weeks ago, he should have been told to go home and put his feet up for a while. Think there's a welfare issue here, and I don't mean Steve Borthwick's coaching career. England will most probably beat Japan, and the back row is one of the relative areas of strength, so England could easily have selected someone else without massively weakening the pack.
Go to commentsIm a Ratima fan but I can acknowledge that Roigard is way better.
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