EARL-Y WARNING SYSTEM
‘Monster’ Ben pledges bigger things to come from him on England duty
MAN of the moment Ben Earl has hit the heights in the current Six Nations but warns he is worlds away from where he wants to be.
The Saracens back row has edged towards joining the top rank of global performers since the start of the World Cup when he finally nailed down an England spot.
He turned in another man-of-the match performance in last weekend’s 23-22 win over Ireland (scoring below, right) but insists there is more where that came from.
Earl was messed around by Eddie Jones, and dropped by Steve Borthwick in last year’s Six Nations, but the 26-year-old will be one of the first names on the team sheet for this weekend’s trip to France.
Earl was a monster on the front foot against the Irish but amazingly was not chuffed with his defensive work in the upset.
“I’ve made no secret to where I want to be in the game,” he said. “I’m trying to take my game to a place it’s not been before.
“You have to nit-pick and look at your performance as a whole, especially being a back row because it’s not all about what you do with the ball in hand, it’s not all about what you do without the ball, it’s a combination of both.
“I’m trying to get to a point where both facets of my game are at a world class standard. That’s not the case now and it’s certainly something I’m working very hard towards.
“My goal is to show good can I be, how good can the team be? If you’ve got 15, 23 guys, 36 guys all pulling for that, that’s a pretty exciting place to be. And I know that’s a goal of quite a few players in our squad.
“I didn’t really know where my game was at, and I’ve been fortunate to have the opportunity to grow it over the last three or four games.”
To outsiders, England’s win over Ireland, who were chasing a Grand Slam, came out of nowhere but the squad claim they always felt there were big games in them.
They used a siege mentality last weekend ahead of the Twickenham date to fire themselves up, but that trick only works for so long. And Earl reckons it is time to park the ‘them and us’ mentality ahead of the trip to Lyon and the last game of the tournament.
He added: “That motivation of proving people wrong is a myopic, short-term tactic that lasts one, maybe two weeks. Then it is like ‘right that’s happened’.
“Steve would never let us stand still and say, ‘you know what boys, we have had a great result, let’s have a week on the beers and not train that much.’ I promise you this week has been harder and more demanding. Last week counts for nothing if you lose this week or not lose but play poorly. We want to go back to the England way of playing.”