Book Review: Joe Marler – Loose Head Confessions of an (Un)professional rugby player, Joe Marler Penguin – 2020

‘One day a coach said about my mood swings, ‘Joe you have the capacity to do good or evil.’ Hi jinks and positivity one moment – making teammates laugh, raising the energy in the room…then crash…miserable as sin, sniping and lashing out. But it wasn’t the old red mist. It was more like black mist. Gloom, despondency. I had no idea where it had come from.’

The Guardian Review comment ‘Very Funny’ printed on the front cover, is, of course, the truth, but not the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Not by a long chalk.

Joe Marler – Loose Head is an autobiography of a great Lions and England and beloved Quins rugby player up until 2020. If he writes a follow-up dealing with the 2020-2025 years before his retirement from Quins, put me down on the wait-list.

I should declare some self-interest. I’m a Quins fan…but have arrived to that calling very late in the day. That story for another day.

I was – and this is slightly embarrassing - loose head prop for Simon Langton Boys’ School 1975/1976 and played appalling poor rugby in the backs for Canterbury Vths and VIths the following year. I was 5’9” and 10st10lbs. An immense threat to…no-one. My short rugby career came to a shuddering halt during trials for Exeter University when I made the terrible mistake of running with the ball…I became the ball…the air squeezed out of my lungs caught between opposition forwards and my lot, all twice my size and strength. I lasted about 10 minutes and left knowing what I should have known all along…I should have been scrum-half…or stuck with golf, or chess.

OK, so, to the book.

Joe Marler has lit up the rugby scene with his outrageous haircuts, cheeky persona on the pitch, and terrible red-mist moments. He has played in one of the most bruising positions in world sport at the highest level representing England in the 2019 World Cup Final and momentous victories with the Lions.

But the absolute joy of this book is its courageous and often, very funny, honesty. It’s not been plain sailing for Joe Marler, the hard man, often bawling his eyes out as he deals with Joe Marler the human being.

Joe Marler – Loose Head takes you behind the scenes into the locker room, dubious initiation ceremonies, alcohol-induced craziness, sharing rooms and lives on tour, naked wrestling with Johnny May, his relationship with Eddy Jones, desperate depression, occasional violence, a marriage to Daisy that very nearly imploded, recovery, and advocate for CALM (Campaign Against Living Miserably).

Along the way, your swear word lexicon will be given a work-out and I wouldn’t be surprised if you find the tears falling, but you will also laugh out loud - more than weep, and – Oh Dear! – you will reminisce about your own changing room past, Ralgex spray, the smell of the soil of the pitch, the crunch of battle, and all things rugby - and start searching for your long unused and mould-infused rugby boots.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading Joe Marler – Loose Head. Instead of reading, It felt as if the man himself was talking to you, a natural flowing style, but that didn’t diminish the book’s punch, but enabled Marler to articulate all the above – as Joe Marler not as a ***** biographer who knows ******** about rugby, not to quote him, but you get the drift.

Final comment: there is a great collection of b&w photos in the middle of the book that spans Marler’s life from under 5s to 2020.

A must read.