Scotland vs England, Six Nations 2016: Dylan Hartley - It's good to have an England captain who lives his rugby in the raw

Th red rose’s new leader gives impressive display in build-up to Saturday’s match against Scotland with honest answers devoid of spin

The England captain, Dylan Hartley, during training at Pennyhill Park yesterday (Reuters)

It almost started with a moment of slapstick farce for Dylan Hartley. A chair was being manoeuvred into position for the new England captain, who misjudged its whereabouts and came close to sitting down flat on the floor. It took some moments for the laughter to subside before he got down to the business of talking about leading the nation.

And when he did, there was something immediate in the conversation which erased all the usual earnestness and platitudes which are the default mode on such occasions. Are you nervous at all, Dylan? “No.” The role doesn’t make you stop and think? “No.” The monosyllables were not one of those dead-bat exercises which elite international sport increasingly entails, but Hartley’s instinctive responses to what was put before him. He was self-deprecating, sometimes unsure, occasionally irreverent, less capable of confecting answers, dissembling, or repackaging himself as England captain than any in his position who have sat before us in recent years.

He weighed out the humour in a way which perhaps made you see why Eddie Jones has been so keen on the squad spending more time eating and drinking together. Did Hartley “visualise things” the night before or in the morning, he was asked. He paused, excellently, for dramatic effect. “Well… bit personal isn’t it…?”

His drama-free attitude towards leading his country was best summed up when he related what had happened to his compatriot Sean Fitzpatrick, whose counsel he has sought in recent days. When the former All Blacks captain asked advice from his predecessor Andy Dalton on leadership “he got the big ‘fuck off’”, Hartley related with the smile of a man who sees simplicity not hyperbole in his new role.

Though it is widely accepted that Jones’ decision to appoint an individual with Hartley’s reputation could go one of two ways, this was a blessed contrast with what we always heard from his predecessor. It was a mere five months ago that Chris Robshaw was sitting in the captain’s seat Hartley almost missed and, though he brought tact, discretion and safety, you would leave his press conferences wondering how in the hell Stuart Lancaster had installed him as leader of the nation’s best rugby players.

The interview which followed Robshaw’s disastrous conclusion that England must kick for touch rather than the sticks against Wales in that fateful World Cup pool game was the quintessential one. “Backs-to-the-wall” attitude, “must-win”, “rough-with-the smooth”, “good times, bad times: deal with both” and “find out the character of the individuals” all featured in Robshaw’s vocabulary that day, along with a discussion of the sports psychologist in the camp – “a guy, Bill,” as Robshaw described Bill Beswick – which underlined the sense that the ancillary aspects of sports science have not captivated him.

It is very safe to say Hartley – a smarter individual – would not have opted for the safety of groupthink, as Robshaw did when confronted with his big decision on that September Saturday at Twickenham. The discussion with us which followed would have revealed transparent regret and agony, too. Hartley lives his rugby in the raw and there will be no disguising that.

The $64,000 question as we venture into Six Nations territory is whether he will be able to summon the self-control which does not always come naturally to him, in the heat of the moment. Jones, as far removed from Lancaster as Hartley is from his predecessor, has said that he does not want the hooker to rein in a personality which, as we know too well, has made gouging, biting and headbutting a part of his vernacular. Hartley suggested that time and responsibility have taught him that there is a way of breaking this cycle: not thinking too much about the game which lies up ahead. (A little less visualisation in hotel rooms, you might say.)

“I just think that I know how to prepare for a game now and what works for me; trying not to build it up too much in my own head or think about it so much,” Hartley said. “It’s about knowing the detail; knowing that I’ve done the work. Then I can relax and look forward to the game. That’s how I feel now.”

It was when asked how he might react if England received the same pre-match provocation the Welsh dealt them in Cardiff – keeping the red-rose players waiting in the tunnel before the Six Nations opener exactly a year ago – that he betrayed a clue suggesting anything could still happen where he is provoked. “You know me,” he said. “I’ll react to how I feel accordingly at the time.” As he put it when asked whether he had a pre-match dressing-room speech prepared for Murrayfield on Saturday evening: “I don’t write cue cards...” Yet he is wise enough to know that this is the moment in which he and his rugby will be judged for all time. His discussion of a self-held belief that the world wants to see him “muck up” was the only part of the conversation which was less than transparent.

Who wanted him to fall on his face, then? Other players? “You guys don’t, do you?” he said, avoiding the question. He said he is “in control” of the story now. “Because I can just say the same line, and it gets boring for you guys, it gets boring for me. And that’s that, you know?” No. He cannot spin a line. Actions, not words, will define whether we will look back in four years, or perhaps even two months, and say that it was a fool or a king who captained England.

For now, though, it is a chance to rejoice in an everyman who happens to be capable of quite extraordinary feats on a rugby field. Robshaw talked those few months ago about escaping pressures by walking the dog, a little Affenpinscher called Rico, on Wandsworth Common, in south London. Hartley said he was simply heading back to his hotel room to “look through my notes just to make sure I know the lineouts. I’ll just worry about myself, then the captaincy thing will naturally come on the day.” You gave thanks for that.