According to Mike Brown, after being dropped following an incident with his then team-mate, he had a heated exchange with the England coach
From The Telegraph.
Mike Brown has revealed the extent of his expletive-ridden spat with Eddie Jones in 2019, which occurred as the former England full-back was being dropped for the World Cup after being punched by drunk team-mate Ben Te’o.
In a wide-ranging interview with RugbyPass, Brown accused Jones of spinelessness, using the episode as an excuse to leave him out.
Brown’s fight with Te’o had taken place on a team social at a beach club in Treviso during a training camp that was “the toughest I’ve ever experienced in my life”. Brown had taken issue with Maro Itoje, who had been “whacking” players on their chests as a joke, before Te’o started to wind him up and then punched him towards the end of the evening.
Although he holds no grudge against Te’o, Brown was disappointed that England colleagues did not stick up for him. He also said that the incident caused the relationship between him and Jones to collapse because the England head coach used it as a reason to axe Brown.
“A few days later when [Jones] is ringing around people to say they’re not involved, he kind of puts it on that [the fight],” Brown told Jim Hamilton of RugbyPass.
“I said to him: ‘Look, I understand selection is what it is, but don’t put it on that. You haven’t even asked me what happened. With all due respect, I didn’t really do anything. I don’t feel like it was my fault, I hadn’t drunk much, two drinks or whatever. There was other people in a worse state than me and I was just trying to mind my own business.’”
From there, Jones grew abusive towards Brown. “But then he [Jones] just switched and turned on me, effing and blinding and stuff,” added the 36-year-old, who won 72 caps. “It wasn’t nice. Just be a man and say what is the reason I’m not getting picked. Don’t try to put it on that, because it’s not that. It’s clear and obvious it’s not that. I asked him to tell me what he thinks happened and he said: ‘My security guards were there, they told me what happened.’
“I said ‘let me see what they’ve said has happened’, because he said he had written reports. He wouldn’t give me that. He said: ‘Who the eff do you think you are?’ because I was going back at him and he doesn’t like that. That was a shame it ended up like that, but I wanted clarity on why I wasn’t getting picked, not some made-up excuse.”
Although Brown described Jones as a “smart, clever, rugby-intelligent guy,” he also addressed the turnover of backroom coaches that has characterised the Australian’s tenure.
“He’s hard on the players and then he’s another level with the staff, so I can understand why people don’t last very long there because it must be tough being part of his staff,” Brown said.
Always a Wasp
Topic: The X-rated Eddie Jones phone call that ended my England career (Read 1587 times)