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England prop Marler mischievously tweets 'let's talk' to American MLR team
By Liam Heagney
England prop Joe Marler has mischievously hinted that he fancies a switch at some stage to Major League Rugby in America, the tournament where his old Harlequins captain Chris Robshaw now plays for San Diego Legion.
Loosehead Marler has recently been in a rich vein of form, helping attack-drilled Harlequins reach the Gallagher Premiership semi-finals after he made himself unavailable for the Guinness Six Nations campaign with England due to the bubble safety restrictions surrounding the England camp.
The soon-to-be 31-year-old likely has numerous years of frontline rugby in England ahead of him but he has curiously taken to Twitter and responded to a recent tweet posted by The Rugby Network, the website drumming up publicity surrounding the fledgling league in America where every match can be watched online for free.
Fans of the Houston Sabercats were asked to vote for their dream signing and after it was announced that they most fancied Marler having a stint playing in Texas, the player himself tweeted: "Let's talk..."
The Sabercats have been enduring a difficult 2021 season as they are currently bottom of the Western Conference following just two wins in eleven outings and they were beaten 28-9 in their most recent match last weekend by Austin Gilgronis.
The American League is growing in popularity as a destination for high profile recruits, especially from England. Former Test level full-back Ben Foden was the signing that broke the mould, the ex-Northampton player linking up with Rugby United New York, an alliance covered at length in the well-received RugbyPass documentary Foden: Stateside.
Having finished his career at Harlequins, ex-England skipper Robshaw headed to America for the 2021 season as did seasoned referee JP Doyle, the popular official who was unfortunately made redundant in a cost-cutting exercise by the RFU last summer. Now Marler has mischievously hinted he too could be tempted into a Stateside switch.
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Latest Comments
Yeah me too. I think the Welsh have it in them to make it a contest in the first half. Give the boks' second stringers a headache. Disrupting lineouts is one area the welsh could cause problems. Bok lineouts have been subpar.
And then fronting up in the collisions and at the rucks. If the boks get the ascendancy there too early, it could be a hiding. Jaden hendrikse had a tough game against the Scots - who were very good at disrupting the boks flow. The welsh would have taken note of this i'm sure.
But the bok bench will finish the welsh off i'm afraid.
Go to commentsYes, certainly. As an AB fan happy to be included in that top 3 of "matches that are routinely decided by one score" now, we were well outside that for a few years.
They have not had enough games yet. You can't undo so many poor years just like that. Asking for miracles like SA losing is not the way to get back to number 1.
They might get there as those bad years filter out of the rankings but it's guarenteed to be great fun going back and forth with SA once that happens.
Admittedly Foster only really had one bad year (21/22 season), but that's more likely because COVID stopped a lot of tough games from being played, and effected the other countries they did play far more than themselves.
A real shame we both don't get to see it unfold first with our regions teams in SR!
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