Dylan Hartley: Is Northampton Saints hooker the right man to captain England?

Naming the sinning Saint as on-field lieutenant will be Eddie Jones’s greatest gamble

(Getty Images)

There are at least two ways of looking at Dylan Hartley, the man who will be captain of England if, as expected, the new head coach Eddie Jones hands him that honour tomorrow ahead of the Six Nations Championship opener in Scotland on Saturday week.

One is that the Northampton Saints hooker is a man who plays the game precisely as it should be played: a little wild and woolly, disarmingly charming after the event, and better to have at your side than snarling in your face. Another is that with cameras everywhere and all sorts of people’s reputations and livelihoods at stake, including his own, Hartley’s possession of the worst disciplinary record in English rugby is unacceptable, and he should be nowhere near the national squad, never mind the prestigious job of being its leader and public face.

Jones has made his view clear already. Simply by recalling the player who has more caps (66) than anyone else in the current England squad, the Australian coach has given the New Zealand-born front-rower a shot at redemption. Or, it might be said, yet another shot, considering the 29-year-old Hartley is on his sixth comeback from a disciplinary suspension. Jones wants a belligerent pack, and he wants hookers who hook, not just push, in the scrums.

“Success for England is to be the most dominant team in the world,” Jones said on Thursday. “[It means] we go out to Twickenham and we can kill a team up front, we can scrum them to death and maul them to death.”

And the coach, who is a former hooker himself, does not minimise the importance of the captaincy, as others sometimes do.

“The captain has to be the coach of the team, making decisions for the team on the field,” Jones said. “I will probably be working more closely with him than I will be with the other coaches.”

With this leap of faith, will Jones fall flat on his face or prove himself a marvellous man-manager? Hartley at his best carries the ball witheringly, scrummages reliably and throws to the line-out with pace and accuracy. At his worst, he loses his self-control in big matches. The matter is further complicated by Saracens’ Jamie George, who on his scintillating form in the set piece and around the field deserves to be the England hooker starting at Murrayfield.

Jones’s predecessor, Stuart Lancaster, dropped Hartley after he was banned for a butt – really, it was no more than a narky swipe – on George in last May’s Premiership semi-final between Northampton and Saracens. The 25-year-old Saracen went on to play well when winning the Premiership final, scoring a galloping try, and it was he who took Hartley’s vacant place at the World Cup. Once there, George played third fiddle to Tom Youngs of Leicester and Bath’s Rob Webber but the latter pair have been jettisoned by Jones in favour of the returning Hartley and Luke Cowan-Dickie, the 22-year-old prospect from Exeter.

Hartley suffered concussion soon after his return from the butting suspension in October, and he spent the next six match weeks resting. Since mid-May he has played just eight club matches, while George has been starting regularly for Saracens, and occasionally captaining them too. On the bright side, Hartley has had a good rest.

So what weight should be given to that shocking rap sheet? The fire within is so often what separates the mightiest sporting beasts from the also-rans. Hartley once passed out on the field temporarily because of the effort he put into the squeeze at one scrum. He has fought his way to the top of the English game from an unpromising start, getting out of his native Rotorua as a teenager initially to visit relatives in Sussex. All hookers lurch between the severest physical onslaught and the clinically exposed skill of throwing to the line-out.

Last night’s match at Scarlets was Hartley’s 280th appearance, either for Northampton or England, and he has received two red cards, 16 yellows, plus four post-match citings. That’s 250-plus matches when he has been free of such sanctions. Our unique review of all the offences shows that nine were committed at the breakdown – taking one for the team or a lapse in discipline, it’s a matter of opinion. The rest were for foul or violent play or abusing a referee.

As a direct result of bans totalling 54 weeks (more than a year off in a 10-and-a-half-year senior career), Hartley has missed two World Cups (2007 and 2015) and one British & Irish Lions tour. In the one World Cup he did play in, he contributed to England’s poor disciplinary record in New Zealand in 2011 with a yellow card in an easy win over Georgia.

Hartley has helped Northampton emerge from the shadow of neighbours Leicester, achieve promotion to the Premiership in 2008 and win the league title for the first time six years later. With England, he won the Six Nations Championship in 2011 and captained them once in South Africa in 2012 when Chris Robshaw was unavailable.

All in all, the verdict from Stephen Ferris, the hard-nut Ireland flanker bitten by Hartley at Twickenham in 2012, has a ring of veracity. “Roger Wilson, who played with him [Hartley] at Northampton, tells me he is a really good lad,” wrote Ferris in his autobiography. “I am sure he is a decent fella, but he is dirty on the pitch. He is a good rugby player who manages to get himself into a bit of trouble too often.”

Now here’s another twist: George has made 162 appearances, either for Saracens or England (the majority from the bench) and received no red cards, no yellows and no bans. Asked how he saw the subject of discipline, George replied: “There’s the team approach – we have four key values at Saracens and one of them drilled into us is discipline. There is definitely an awareness we are a better team when we don’t give penalties away. We want to be whiter than white and not give any team anything cheap.

“From my point of view, I feel I am letting my team-mates down if I give a cheap penalty away or go off the field for 10 minutes. That’s 10 minutes the team is going to have to work extra hard. Part of my motivation is gaining respect from the players I play with. I hadn’t thought about it but I haven’t been yellow-carded since school, yet I go in with the same intent and physicality as anyone else.

“I’m willing to fight for the people around me but there’s a time and a place when you have to stand up for yourself, and I don’t want to be taking my mind off the game, on the floor with handbags or whatever – that’s taking me out of the game mentally and that’s something I try not to do.

“My dad coached me from an early age to say ‘yes sir, no sir’ to referees. I always have a huge amount of respect for the referees and generally I have a good relationship with them. When I’ve captained this season, it’s generally gone well. I feel you are not going to get anything out of the referee if you’re screaming and shouting.”

So that is the history and the conjecture. As soon as they arrive in camp in Surrey this evening, Hartley and George must be team-mates, and set the notorious enmity between their clubs aside. One wears the halo of hardly anyone in rugby having a bad word to say about him. The other – Dylan Hartley, the sinning Saint – once again faces the challenge of summoning the best of himself against the noisy background of critical doubt.

--

England since 2008

(66 appearances incl 22 as sub)

Post-match citing

v Ireland, Twickenham, March 2012: Bit finger of Stephen Ferris, banned for eight weeks. Won 30-12.

Yellow cards: 3

v Georgia, World Cup, Dunedin, Sept 2011: Handled in the ruck. Won 40-10.

v South Africa, Port Elizabeth, June 2012: Handled in the ruck. Drew 14-14.

v South Africa, Twickenham, Nov 2014: Stamped on Duane Vermeulen. Lost 31-28.

Northampton since 2005

(214 appearances incl 42 as sub)

Red cards: 2

v Leicester, home, Dec 2014: Elbowed Matt Smith, banned for three weeks. Won 23-19.

v Leicester, Twickenham, Premiership final, May 2013 (right): Verbally abused referee, banned for 11 weeks. Lost 37-17.

Post-match citings

v Saracens, home, May 2015: Head-butted Jamie George, banned for four weeks. Lost 29-24.

v Ulster, home, Dec 2012: Struck Rory Best with arm, banned for two weeks. Lost 25-6.

v Wasps, away, April 2007: Two cases of contact with eye area, banned for 26 weeks. Lost 35-29.

Yellow cards: 13

v Racing Métro, home, Jan 2015: Tackled opponent while on ground. Lost 32-8.

v Sale, away, March 2014: Scuffled with Sam Tuitupou, who also went to sin-bin. Lost 19-6.

v Worcester, away, Feb 2013: Killed the ball. Won 27-18.

v Exeter, away, Jan 2013: Slowed ruck ball. Won 30-19.

v Cardiff Blues, home, Dec 2010: Fought with Gareth Williams, who also went to sin-bin. Won 23-15.

v Leicester, home, Sept 2010: Killed the ball. Won 27-19.

v Gloucester, home, April 2010: Killed the ball. Won 38-23.

v Saracens, home, May 2009: Fought with Fabio Ongaro, who also went to sin-bin. Won 16-13.

v Saracens, away, Sept 2008: Killed the ball. Lost 26-12.

v Wasps, home, Sept 2008: Kneed Rob Webber, who also went to sin-bin. Won 24-20.

v Doncaster, away, Feb 2008: Pulled down a maul. Won 36-10.

v London Irish, away, Nov 2006: Late tackle. Lost 40-5.

v Gloucester, away, Sept 2005: Punching, one of four Northampton front-rowers sin-binned. Lost 28-24.