Joe Marler has been appointed performance director for Team England Rugby – PA/Zac Goodwin
To misquote movie villain Keyser Soze, the greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world that player welfare is rugby’s No 1 priority.
There’s always a wonderful disconnect between the self-satisfied pageantry that accompanies announcements of supposedly ‘strict’ player game limits in which the No 1 priority cliché gets trotted out and the nonchalance of a French waiter in a busy restaurant when players sail past those thresholds as Maro Itoje did last summer and Freddie Steward did two years before that.
Suddenly those ‘limits’ are not limits at all, more guidelines that you should strive towards like completing your Christmas card list. If you hit it great; if not it is only massively increasing the risk that a player will suffer a serious injury the following season. No biggie.
When Telegraph Sport first raised the prospect of Itoje going over last season’s limit of 30 full game equivalents or 2,400 minutes, we were told this was a one-off because of the World Cup and that he would be carefully managed this season. Steve Borthwick also justified Itoje’s selection on the grounds that he was “desperate to play” as if any player would tell him “no thanks” to playing a Test for England.
Well here we are in January and Itoje has played in 15 games before a final Champions Cup round of pool games and Six Nations. Should he play in all those games, then theoretically he will only be able to play in nine further games for Saracens – who should be in the end-of-season play-off mix – and the British & Irish Lions. So neither a one-off nor particularly careful management.
Kudos then to Joe Marler for promising to hold both club and country to account in his new role as performance director for Team England Rugby. To be clear, Marler will have no official power to determine rest periods but at least he can give a voice to those players he says are “too scared” to approach their directors of rugby.
I cannot say I had Marler acting as a shop steward on my bingo list for 2025 but in nearly every respect he would be perfect for the role. Recently retired with a direct connection to this generation of players, Marler’s greatest gift is that he absolutely will not bite his lip. Too often in the past, there was a perception that players’ representatives have had little leverage in these discussions. Marler at the very least will bluntly say what needs to be said and has already raised concerns with Saracens director of rugby Mark McCall over Nick Isiekwe’s rest periods.
As he pointed out on the podcast For the Love of Rugby, this will not stop Itoje and others from going past the new limit of appearing in 30 games this season once the Lions tour is factored in. Now there is at least a watchdog who will both bark and bite.
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The post At least Joe Marler cares about saving rugby players from themselves first appeared on Rugby 247.
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Author : rugby-247
Publish date : 2025-01-14 09:31:13
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