HIS country had just suffered a damaging World Cup group stage defeat on home turf so he wasn't really in the mood for talking. Nonetheless, he turned up and provided a pretty curt interview with members of the media.

The venue was the Millennium Stadium, not Twickenham. The player was an established Wales international who now does plenty of media work, not Mike Brown.

The clip of the England full-back giving the briefest of responses to questions – many of which were closed questions, thus inviting short answers – went viral on Sunday after BBC's Scrum V chose to air the footage.

The intention was to make the Harlequins man look like a stroppy so-and-so, especially after he had sparked a first-half melee in Wales' stunning win at Twickenham.

The truth is that such post-match interviews are pretty common and it will be interesting to see if the Beeb's approach is the same next time Alun Wyn Jones is in a spiky mood after a defeat.

Brown was cheesed off and it would be more alarming if a player had come out with carefree attitude. Losing hurts, he showed that.

The England full-back was no more obstructive than the players who have been coached to go through the motions in post-match interviews, pledging to take the positives and dodging questions with 'we'll have to look back at it on the DVD'.

On the whole journalists understand their post-match pain and are respectful but the mocking tone with which the Brown interview was introduced risks players adopting the Marshawn Lynch approach.

In the build-up to the Super Bowl earlier this year the Seattle Seahawks running back, notoriously reluctant to talk to the media, responded to every question with "I'm just here so I won't get fined".

Ribbing players for not channelling the spirit of Frankie Howerd after 80 minutes of brutal Test match rugby is unlikely to buck the trend of them only providing interviews in association with energy drinks, kit providers and car manufacturers.

WARREN Gatland said he delivered a "rocket" to his players on Tuesday that if he saw any of them slacking in training then he would drop them from the XV for Fiji that he had named hours earlier.

England, meanwhile, are struggling to prevent journalists from naming their team before it is officially announced by coach Stuart Lancaster.

Perhaps it's time for rugby to do away with the ruling that teams must be announced a couple of days before the game, instead allow teams to just hand in their teamsheet an hour before kick-off.

The players would know – and coaches would have an inkling about the opposition line-up – but a little bit of mystery would add to the pre-match build-up.