Joe Marler and James Haskell will both be available to Eddie Jones when the England head coach selects his side next week for the trip to Edinburgh to take on Scotland.
Both players are now back from suspensions they received at club level, and as a result, Jones dished out some punishment and Marler admits that it was completely warranted.
“We’ve been up at the crack of dawn being flogged – rightly so – we hadn’t a game to save ourselves for, so we might as well have pushed ourselves to make physical improvements,” he added.
“The fact I have have trained above game intensity will stand me in good stead if selected for the Scotland game. But playing a Test match, you’ll always struggle to adapt to that first five minutes.”
Jones has decided that the players will room together in camp and both players have been in the training squad despite being unavailable for the last two weeks. Even though Marler was involved in training during the week, he reveals that it was really difficult to watch the Wales match on television at the weekend.
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“I got home for the last five minutes,” Marler said. “It is my favourite fixture – England v Wales, the game I love playing in and I was gutted not being part of it. Watching the last five minutes, kicking the kids and the wife out of the lounge, I was like: ‘You need to leave, I need to watch the telly.’”
“That sticks with me. I really need to knuckle down now because I’m missing out on things I really want to be a part of.”