JOE MARLER has been practising his line-out throwing on a daily basis after confessing to doing his best Eminem impression in England’s Calcutta Cup defeat by Scotland.
Marler temporarily stepped into the breach at Murrayfield when Luke Cowan-Dickie was sin-binned for a deliberate knock-on, taking the hooker’s role on the touchline in the 69th minute when the score was tied at 17-17.
However, the veteran prop’s botched throw to Alex Dombrandt failed to travel five metres and, as a result, England gave up a scrum close to their line which was then penalised, allowing Finn Russell to land the match-winning penalty.
It was an influential chain of events in a final quarter that was poorly managed by England and Marler accepts his role in the unravelling.
“I’ve been practising every day. Cockers (forwards coach Richard Cockerill) has been giving me the eyes – ‘right, any danger this week mate?’. I was like ‘yes, OK, fine,” Marler said.
“I just didn’t throw it at the right time. I should have thrown it earlier at Dombrandt. Unfortunately I threw it later and he kept running past the five metres with the eyes of ‘mate, why are you not throwing the ball at me?’.
“And I went ‘I don’t know, I feel like Eminem in 8 Mile when he chokes on stage with his rap’. That’s how I’ve felt.
“Unfortunately, my international record at throwing in is now down to 50% because it was at 100%.
“In my third ever Test, against South Africa away in 2012, Dylan Hartley got sin-binned, I threw it to Geoff Parling in the pod, he won the ball and I had a 100 per cent throw in record. Unfortunately it’s now down to 50 per cent.
“I was very disappointed with losing as closely as we did. It was disappointing and I don’t feel overly great about it, but I’m looking forward to tucking in this week and hopefully picking up the learnings of that last 20 minutes at Murrayfield.”
England have the opportunity to rebuild following their Edinburgh setback when they face Italy in Rome this Sunday.
It should be a routine assignment against the Six Nations’ weakest team and Marler has revealed that losing to Scotland has failed to create any divisions within the squad.
“Ellis Genge and Kyle Sinckler have set the tone this week,” the Harlequins front row said.
“They said that we’re all gutted and disappointed about the loss, we’re all aware of the areas that led to that loss, and aware that Scotland played very well to win that game.
“But we’ve got another game, we can’t sit and wallow. So those two are showing massive amounts of maturity to lead this squad moving forward.
“This group is probably the tightest group I have been a part of with a lot of the youngsters, who are very good friends off the pitch, and the older heads coming together a bit, so it’s very tight.
“And the way we have responded to it has been much less in-house bitching as there may have been in the past. It has actually been a pretty level response.
“We did so many good things in that game but these little execution pieces we didn’t quite get right and we need to work on. It’s never as bad as we think it is and it’s never as good as we think it is.”
