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Marler claims England squad is 'tightest ever' despite the Brown-Te'o altercation
By Nick Heath
Joe Marler has described Eddie Jones’ current England squad as one of the tightest ever even though Mike Brown, his Harlequins team-mate, was involved in a training camp altercation with Ben Te’o.
Brown and Te’o ultimately failed to make the 31-strong squad announced on Monday by Jones that will travel to Japan next month for the World Cup.
That followed an incident that occurred between the pair at a recent warm-weather camp in Treviso. As a result both were excluded by Jones from the squad last week for the warm-up match against Wales on Sunday the day before the World Cup squad announcement.
Despite that situation, Marler, who came out of Test level retirement this summer after quitting the international scene last autumn, believes the squad he has returned to is massively tight.
That is quite a boast given that the 29-year-old was first capped by England in 2012 and has toured with the Lions.
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“It’s the tightest England group I’ve been involved in,” claimed Marler, who earned the last of his 59 Test caps in Cape Town in June 2018.
“To leave the scene for a period of time like I did and come back in and see how much the younger guys and the not-so-senior boys that were 18 months ago, to have seen them grow… they are starting to talk a lot more, their leadership roles have grown a lot more in the group – really impressive.”
“There’s a difference between being tight as a group and everyone being friendly and pally and all that.
“We have still got enough in this group to challenge each other and question each other - in the right way - and also to understand that not everyone’s going to be best mates.
“But we’re still able to get on with each other and work together because we all want to win the World Cup. That is all that counts.”
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I just don't see any progress in their game plan- still unable to cope with rush D, back-line is clunky - not fluid (despite the same players being together for some time), unbalanced lose trio - Ardie has gone backwards and we wasted his best years in a position he was never going to flourish in (those who say he won WPOY in that position miss the point that he would have won at any position but would definitely have still won it at 7), and I don't see an ability of this team to play with confidence knowing their roles. Handling and skills have to be the worst seen for years with sloppy and dropped passes, people not expecting passes - kick-off receptions poor, on and on. This was a hall mark of his Crusader teams. I wonder if Razor wanted to show he could replicate his first year at Saders with the same players Foster used. I struggle to understand his rationale to keep that squad mostly intact (except for retirements or off-shore contracts) and ignore talent emerging in SR. No wonder good SR players are exiting. Rant over. As is my enthusiasm for AB rugby - which is mostly being played by Boks, Irish, French and even Scotland!
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