Former Harlequins and England prop Joe Marler has reflected on leaving the game when he did, admitting that he misses playing dearly.<\/p>\n
Appearing on The Good, The Bad & The Rugby podcast, alongside James Haskell and Jonny May, as well as host Alex Payne, Marler opened up to his former colleagues.<\/p>\n
Explaining why he left when he did, the 35-year-old said: \u201cI got to a point in my career where I absolutely loved playing for England, and the club team that I was part of (Harlequins<\/a>); everyone had slowly retired or left, and numbers were dwindling. <\/p>\n \u201cI hadn\u2019t really engaged with the younger lot to make more connections, so I just ended up becoming that old f****** in the corner who was just miserable about everything.<\/p>\n \u201cThen it sort of really dawned on me that I was poisoning the changing room, and I was like, \u2018I can\u2019t keep doing this to myself\u2019. I was just going into work miserable.\u201d<\/p>\n Noticing that the club that he had spent the entirety of his club career at was no longer the place he once loved, he decided to call it a day.<\/p>\n \u201cBecause I\u2019d stopped with England, it was like, \u2018I\u2019m flogging a dead horse here. I need to get out of this.\u2019<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t think I\u2019d made many friends with that coaching setup or that crop of players. Really, there was only me, Danny Care, Launchers (Joe Launchbury), and a couple of the South African<\/a> boys that were left that I really connected with. And I was like, \u2018I\u2019m probably best off out of this for everyone involved\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n \u2018You\u2019ve changed\u2019<\/p>\n Although Joe was now the \u201cold f****** in the corner\u201d, that wasn\u2019t always the case. In fact, according to May, Marler was once a young speed merchant around the place. But as time went on, both his playing style and his personality changed.<\/p>\n His former England teammate was the one to point it out, saying one day: \u201cYou\u2019ve changed\u201d and adding: \u201cYou grew up\u201d.<\/p>\n Expanding, Marler said: \u201cThere was a period in my life where I was like, \u2018Oh, I\u2019m not sure. Do I still want to be like, Jack the Lad, taking the p***\u2019, the fun we had. Actually, I\u2019ve got to take my career a bit more seriously.<\/p>\n \u201cIt wasn\u2019t until I got in the England setup where Graham Rowntree was like, \u201870% of your involvements are carries or attacking and 30% rucks. If you want to play for England, it\u2019s got to be the other way around\u2019.<\/p>\n \u201cLike your bread and butter is the scrum, and then all that flash stuff you\u2019ve got to knock out. So then I concentrated on that. And that coincided around growing up.\u201d<\/p>\n \u2018I always took my rugby seriously and tried my best\u2019<\/p>\n \u201cYou get to a point where, if you want to become taken more seriously and become experienced, you\u2019ve got to adapt and change,\u201d added May.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI always took my rugby seriously and tried my best, but I was loose and raw and just would mess around a lot like a kid on a holiday camp when I was at England.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd then all of a sudden, you\u2019re 24\/25, people are moving on. You gotta grow up. And he (Marler) grew up a couple of years before me, and we drifted apart. I grew up again, matched him, and we got close again. Everybody\u2019s got to go through life and adapt and grow.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s funny seeing the boys now. It\u2019s great, they\u2019re having a great time these young group of players, Pollock<\/a>, and they\u2019re doing their thing, and it\u2019s great to see them really like messing around in their hotel room. <\/p>\n \u201cIt takes me back to doing that with the lads. They\u2019ll go through a process now of growing up and developing their game, and it\u2019s a journey.<\/p>\n \u201cBut you come in as a 20-year-old, and you leave like 30 with the wife, family, and you grow up in that environment and change your game, and you develop personally as well.\u201d<\/p>\n