{"id":231070,"date":"2025-10-29T00:30:07","date_gmt":"2025-10-29T00:30:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/231070\/"},"modified":"2025-10-29T00:30:07","modified_gmt":"2025-10-29T00:30:07","slug":"england-great-celebrity-traitors-star-joe-marler-in-bullying-regret","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/231070\/","title":{"rendered":"England great & Celebrity Traitors star Joe Marler in ‘bullying’ regret"},"content":{"rendered":"

Former England star Joe Marler has revealed his regret over some of his behaviour during his career after stating that he \u2018bullied\u2019 team-mates.<\/p>\n

The ex-Harlequins prop earned 95 caps for his country but retired from the game in 2024 and is now starring in the UK version of the reality TV show, Celebrity Traitors.<\/p>\n

Marler<\/a> recently appeared on the Great Company podcast hosted by Jamie Laing where he opened up about his life and career.<\/p>\n

Marler\u2019s honesty<\/p>\n

Laing asked the 35-year-old: \u201cDo you think you were a bit of a bully sometimes?\u201d to which the former loosehead replied: \u201cOh yeah, definitely.\u201d<\/p>\n

He added: \u201cIn that environment, it\u2019s almost encouraged. You have to be that alpha, it\u2019s the toxic masculinity often described as poisonous.<\/p>\n

\u201cI could either use my powers for good or evil, and more often than not I\u2019d lean to the evil side.<\/p>\n

\u201cI look back at that and go, f***, the amount of people I\u2019ve made uncomfortable \u2013 I don\u2019t want to do that now, I don\u2019t want to be like that now.\u201d<\/p>\n

As well as being an outstanding player, Marler was also renowned for some of his antics, both on and off the field, but he sometimes took it too far which got him into trouble.<\/p>\n

In 2016, he was suspended for calling Wales forward Samson Lee \u201cGypsy boy\u201d and in 2022 was banned for six weeks after using insulting language in an incident with Bristol Bears flanker Jake Heenan.<\/p>\n

Marler\u2019s biggest suspension came in 2020, however, when he was slapped with a 10-week punishment for fondling the testicles of record Test cap holder Alun Wyn Jones.<\/p>\n

Loose Pass: \u2018Nutsgate\u2019 saga unlikely to rest soon and with good reason as it is \u2018simply not right\u2019<\/a><\/p>\n

Marler apologises<\/p>\n

He apologised for both the Lee and Heenan incidents, and admitted that he was \u201cwrong\u201d for what he did to Jones during their Six Nations clash five years ago.<\/p>\n

Marler also revealed that he has looked to reconcile with former team-mates.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve apologised to them. Whether it\u2019s been well received or not, the damage was already done with a lot of team-mates like that,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s sort of why I retired. I\u2019d spent the last two years of my career at Harlequins. A lot of my group had sort of retired and moved on, and I\u2019d always been close to them.<\/p>\n

\u201cI hadn\u2019t really made any effort at making new friends or engaging with the younger team-mates.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was an outsider through my own fault. I\u2019d been horrible to a number of the team-mates, so they weren\u2019t going to make an effort and it was like, \u2018f***, I need to get out of here\u2019.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not fair on me and my body and all that lot from that point of view, as well as my family, to flog a dead horse, but it\u2019s also not the best thing for the group. It\u2019s their group, it\u2019s their club and I\u2019m sort of this bad smell in the corner that at any moment could just say something.<\/p>\n

\u201cEven the coaches were like, \u2018f*****g hell\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n

READ MORE: England team: Steve Borthwick goes BOLD as Tommy Freeman at centre and five Lions benched for Wallabies showdown<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former England star Joe Marler has revealed his regret over some of his behaviour during his career after…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":231071,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[309,61522,348,98038,50,21002,5903,101,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-231070","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-rugby","8":"tag-england","9":"tag-harlequins","10":"tag-home-page","11":"tag-joe-marler","12":"tag-news","13":"tag-premiership","14":"tag-rugby","15":"tag-sports","16":"tag-uk","17":"tag-united-kingdom","18":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231070","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=231070"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231070\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/231071"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=231070"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=231070"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=231070"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}