By the time the World Cup was drawing to a close, Ben Earl’s notorious whooping and hollering was no longer being talked about, nor was the subject of ridicule. That’s not because he had stopped doing it, rather it became apparent that it might have actually worked and had a positive effect on England. If not that, at the very least it was because his performances were stealing the attention.
Earl was probably England’s best performer across the entire World Cup, and while he started the tournament being caricatured as a mouthy mascot for an underperforming England, he finished the tournament as the driving force behind a side that came within minutes of reaching the World Cup final and beating the eventual champions South Africa.
Well the Saracens and England loose forward had an emphatic message recently- he’s not going to stop any time soon. Joining Jim Hamilton on The Big Jim Show, the 25-year-old said that as long as it does not annoy his own teammates, he will continue with his now-iconic celebrations.
What’s more, Earl also explained the reasons why he does what he does, and why he bizarrely wore a microphone to training to effectively help him improve on his cheering and celebrating.
“Firstly, the people I grew up loving, taking inspiration from, all did it,” he said on the podcast. “And I thought it was a really crucial part of what Saracens were when we were at our most successful.
“But personally, for me, it’s a really good way of keeping myself engaged in games. A hard game of rugby these days is about 37 minutes. That’s 37 minutes of effort and the rest is rest time, ball’s not in play. So moments like that keep me engaged.
“In a scrum, if we get a scrum penalty, I’m obviously not in the middle of a scrum so I’m not blowing out my arse, I can really get the boys up for this, I can enjoy the victories. And I think on the same side, it’s what it can do to the opposition. If an opponent sees me – we’ve had a long defensive set and we get a turnover – and we’re celebrating, it just shows that we’ve got so much more in us, and we do. Obviously boys are hands on heads, hands on knees, on the floor, gasping for air, if I’m showing others that I’m ready to go, I’m showing the opposition that I’m ready to go, that can only be a good thing for the team.
“I’ve said this to a few people who have asked me about it, I will continue to do it and if a teammate goes to me ‘Ben, I really don’t like it, it really off-puts me,’ I’ll stop in a heartbeat and that’s fine. But until that point, I’ll continue to do it.
“A big problem of mine when I was younger was I would be very inconsistently in games. I’d have an amazing five minutes and then I wouldn’t touch the ball for ten minutes or I wouldn’t make a tackle or my body language would be poor. I remember speaking to Alex Sanderson when he was at Sarries and we were trying to find ways of keeping me engaged in moments so that I was staying switched on. We came up with that as a way of really engaging me. I remember training with a mic on a couple of times and reviewing what I was saying to others and how I was talking to myself and that’s the result I came up with.”
