Former England second-row Dave Attwood has lifted the lid on a fiery bust-up with Owen Farrell that turned personal—over what started as a cheeky rugby league dig.
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The 35-year-old, who called time on his career last season, opened up on the RugbyPass Offload podcast, recalling the incident that boiled over during their England days under Stuart Lancaster and Eddie Jones. It followed a night out after a Test abroad—and things got messy.
“On the pitch, I struggle a lot with Owen Farrell. We just don’t see eye to eye on a lot of things,” Attwood began.
“He is the best 10 in the world, he is incredibly good, I have got enormous respect for him as a player but I get very frustrated with him watching him as a player, playing against him.”
But the respect didn’t stop things getting personal off the pitch.
“He hates me with a passion. Despite my earthy roots, he thinks I am a posh c***. He hates that.”
The trigger? A bit of classic union versus league banter that Farrell didn’t find funny.
“I bagged rugby league once jovially. I was saying it to take the ps kind of thing, ‘a bloody sport for the peasants’. He f*ing hated it and out in Italy or maybe France he fully lost the plot. He had a bit of a shout at me and went off to the toilet and I followed him.”
“We all had a drink or two after the game but we didn’t need to get carried away with this. I was in the urinal behind the door and he was three or four down and as I got in his dad [Andy] walked in as well, he was coaching at the time.”
What happened next was something out of a sitcom.
“He was like, ‘I don’t want to f***ing hear it’ or something like that and as he walked out he went to open the door and slam it into the back of me. There was like a stop on the floor so it hit the stop and almost clocked him back.”
That was the start of the cold war between the two—never formally addressed, but always bubbling.
“We never really addressed it after that. That was where it started and it was like a drunken little bit of argy that went too far.”
“He is an incredibly competitive athlete and he is also very f***ing good, he has got high standards. He is a very competitive athlete and in order to be that good, you have to flirt on the wrong side of competitive.”
And it didn’t end there. The tension carried over to the pitch whenever they faced off.
“So whenever we played each other there is always some element in the game where one of us is running at the other one or we are trying to bang each other. There always seems to be an element of that to it. I am sure he is like, ‘I don’t even know that Dave is playing’.”
Attwood’s final England appearance came in 2016, and he hung up his boots at the end of last season—but he’s clearly not forgotten that infamous post-match urinal run-in.
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Four Lions players who flopped against the Reds
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💨 Duhan Van Der Meh
When fast and loose turns into just loose.
RUCK 5.5/10:
“Van der Merwe was very suspect especially in defence with some key moments when he looked well off the pace. In attack he just looked very one dimensional and looked nowhere near his usual standard we’re used to.”
Rugby Pass 5/10:
“The Reds exploited his slowness to turn with some probing kicks and he was nearly made to pay for a casual one-handed gather when under pressure on his own try line.
“It took 14 minutes before he received his first pass and was largely anonymous as an attacker until the game started to break up. Nice finish for the Lions’ third try atoned for some of his backfield errors, but was overshadowed by his fellow winger Freeman.”
FLO Rugby 3/10:
“Firmly on the back foot for a test spot, the powerhouse Scottish winger does not look comfortable in the Lions’ system. Unlike Scotland, where his strike running ability is a key focal point, in Andy Farrell’s system, more is expected of wingers to go looking for work.
“Throw into the mix his struggles in the air, rather reckless one-handed grab of a ball behind his own line and brutally poor positioning for the Reds’ second try by Josh Flook, and it is tough to see Farrell trusting him on the big occasions. Overall, it was a fast and loose showing from van der Merwe, who did score a try, albeit it was a simple run-in.”
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