Mike Brown is no fan of leaks.
Mike Brown is no fan of the leaker of leaks and when the full-back catches up with the source of all those England stories he might make them leak a little themselves.
Blood that is.
“But it will come out who it was at the end of the day so it will be interesting when it does because I will be one of the first people to speak to them.”
Speaking to The Daily Telegraph Brown voiced his anger at the England squad members who have been inflicting death by a thousand cuts on Stuart Lancaster with a steady trickle of embarrassing stories in the wake of England’s World Cup exit.
Lest you forgot allow us to recap. There was:
The off-tune row over headphones
https://twitter.com/beatsbydreUK/status/644978351602577408?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
The stampede to mock the horse-whispering
The bonanza of blame regarding failed oil drilling investments
Throw in Sam Burgess’s acrimonious and embarrassing departure back to the comforting bosom of rugby league and the fallout to this World Cup dwarfs the dwarf-throwing of 2011.
https://twitter.com/TryTime_TV/status/651037811915780096
Brown, whose irascibility is topped only by his plain-speaking, is understandably pissed off by the revelations, which are clearly aimed at damaging Lancaster’s already minuscule hopes of keeping his job.
So, Brown did the only thing he could do, give an interview to the paper that exclusively published most of those stories, in which he makes the very fair point that people in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.
In other words, if you get knocked out of your own World Cup at pool stages, how about you shut up for a bit?
“I don’t think anyone was good enough in an England shirt to be piping up saying: ‘This was wrong, that was wrong’ and that sort of thing.
“If they are going to say something, I think they should put their name to it. That is going to make it even more difficult when we (the England squad) do meet up because I think the trust has been, as you can imagine, completely shot now,” he said.
“It is going to be hard for me to call anyone team-mates until we meet up,” Brown added. “Yes, it is going to be tough. Everything good is built on trust. Everything good at Harlequins is built on trust.
“There is no trust (with England) now, as far as I am concerned. But it will all get sorted out with whoever is in charge or whoever is there. It will get sorted out, to move the team forwards, it always does in team environments.
“There has been a story at the weekend which is absolutely ridiculous so the trust has gone now as far as I am concerned,” Brown said, referring to the oil investment yarn. “I worked so hard to play in a World Cup and I am passionate about playing for England.
“It is just difficult because we have not left it in a good place and it doesn’t help with all these people deciding to pipe up in the squad that probably shouldn’t be, probably anonymously.”
Piping up, plugging leaks… Mike Brown should have been a plumber. An angry, angry plumber.
