After defending his initial X post to McCoist, the Scot then asked him for his own thoughts whenever he faced the Haka during his career. “Hurry up!” Marler responded. “Can we just get on with it?”
The reply had both the Rangers icon and co-host Andy Townsend in stitches, but Marler wasn’t done there. He then added: “They can say how much it means to them but there will always be one or two who aren’t really buying into it.
“So I tried to look for that because they are a bit more ‘I’m just doing this because everyone else is doing it’.”
Marler, whose on and off-field behaviour has long divided opinion amongst fans and pundits, then struck a more serious tone when he argued his actions helped increase interest in England’s opening Autumn International clash. And he even implied rugby chiefs could now learn a lesson about marketing the sport.
“Could I have articulated it better? Yes,” he conceded. Open quotes “But if I’d articulated the tweet better, would it have got the reaction that it did? Probably not. I knew exactly what I was doing.
“You guys here at talkSPORT were talking about it and although it was fuelling my narcissism, it was actually bringing up a mega rugby fixture that otherwise you maybe wouldn’t have spoken about as much. Let’s grow the sport a bit more. Let’s look at boxing and the way Eddie Hearn sells it and stop restricting ourselves.”
Following the defeat to New Zealand, it was another agonising day for Marler’s former side on Saturday, beaten 42-37 at the death by Australia.
They now face South Africa this Saturday staring down the barrel of a third straight defeat at Allianz Stadium.
