The pair’s exchange has become a running in-camp gag in the build-up to England’s final-round meeting with France on Saturday, with Smith, 5ft 11in, 13st 13lb and 15 caps, joking that he and Itoje, 6ft 5in, 18st 8lb, 101 caps, would settle a difference of opinion physically, rather than verbally, next time.<\/p>\n
“I thought it was funny,” said Smith. “Me and Maro have been joking about it this week and I told him if he shouts at me like that again, I’m going to punch him!”<\/p>\n
Itoje, usually a composed presence on and off the pitch, insisted his raised voice was not a lost temper.<\/p>\n
“I didn’t really lose it!” he laughed. “You don’t often see me with a mic. I’m not always mic’d up but maybe I’m portraying a false image.<\/p>\n
“Fin is my guy. The way I try to do things is to hear what my key decision-makers think of what is going on, and whoever plays 10 will obviously have an important role in that.<\/p>\n
“It’s a good thing that people in the team feel they can express a view, and in sport, if anything, that’s the most kosher of fallouts that the world has ever seen. <\/p>\n
“We have had far more blunt conversations between ourselves and other team-mates.”<\/p>\n
England have had cause for frank discussions during this Six Nations after three successive defeats left their title aspirations in tatters.<\/p>\n
Another against France would mean England finish with a return of one win from a Six Nations campaign for the first time since the tournament expanded in 2000.<\/p>\n
England have only lost four games in a single edition of the 143-year-old championship twice previously – in 1972 and 1976.<\/p>\n
Smith, who made his first England start in the victory over France last year at the beginning of a 12-match winning streak, is in an unfamiliar position.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The pair’s exchange has become a running in-camp gag in the build-up to England’s final-round meeting with France…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":343604,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-343603","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/343603","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=343603"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/343603\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/343604"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=343603"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=343603"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=343603"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}