Dylan Hartley: 'Look at the hookers around the world. They are all confrontational'

He was not shy about mixing it with the All Blacks and it has earned him a start against Australia

(GETTY IMAGES)

The Twickenham authorities are stubbornly puritanical when it comes to replaying the occasional outbreak of how's-your-father on the big screens at either end of the stadium, which explains why Dylan Hartley is still in the dark about his much-debated "assault" on the All Black captain Richie McCaw last weekend. "I still haven't seen a clip of the incident," the hooker said yesterday. "I looked up to see what happened, but the tape was cut short."

Not that he was wholly ignorant of the fact that he had sailed rather close to the wind in blindsiding the prone, defenceless McCaw with a shoulder charge of questionable legality: while the censors filleted the incident, the New Zealand lock Brad Thorn declined to take the Mary Whitehouse approach and went after Hartley with a vengeance. If the Rotorua-born England forward can get on the wick of his own countrymen to such an extent, he might really annoy the Australians when he confronts them in three days' time.

Of course, this is all part of the front-rower's game. "Look at the hookers around the world," Hartley commented after being promoted to the starting line-up for the Wallaby contest. "They're all confrontational people. When you spend your life in the thick of it, you need some edge. I don't think I'll ever lose that part of my make-up: if it was taken away, I'd be a completely different player."

Martin Johnson does not want a "different" Hartley, although he might prefer a slightly scaled-down version. Asked whether he was certain the Northampton hooker had consigned the worst of himself to the bottom of the behavioural cupboard and had added an element of judicious restraint to the many gifts that make him a hooker of rich potential – energy, fearlessness, impeccable handling skills – the manager replied: "There are no certainties in life, except death and taxes. It's a question of balance, and Dylan has to put himself on the right side of it. He needs to be a force for good. I like what he brings us, but if we give away silly penalties against the best opposition, it'll kill us."

Johnson could have gone either way on the hooking front ahead of this weekend's must-win match. Had he retained the long-serving Steve Thompson as the fulcrum of the red-rose scrum, few would have argued – especially as England risk being run off their feet if they fail to reap the maximum reward from their set-piece game. There again, Hartley did some terrific things off the bench against the All Blacks, not least in nailing a try that few, if any, of his fellow forwards would have scored. As he is likely to travel to New Zealand for next year's World Cup as the No 1 hooker, the switch makes sense.

The manager is not alone in crediting Hartley with a sharp improvement in performance at the business end of the forward conflict. "His set-piece work wasn't his strong suit initially," admitted the specialist scrum coach Graham Rowntree, who won more than 50 caps as an England prop and is slowly constructing a red-rose unit fully fit for purpose. "But he's worked hard on that part of his game and he's shown a good deal of maturity since taking over the captaincy at Northampton. I think we were right to use Steve from the start against a New Zealand pack perceived to carry a real threat at the scrum. This is a different game and I'm confident Dylan will deliver."

During yesterday's training session at the team base in Surrey, the England pack warmed up with a live scrummaging hit-out against opponents who were specifically asked to operate in Wallaby fashion. Inevitably, this led to a wisecrack or two – "Did you push them back a really long way, or just over the border into Sussex?" was probably the pick of them – but Hartley refused to buy the argument that any meeting with Australia amounted to an 80-minute tea party for the England front row.

"They're not going to lay down and die after 20 minutes, or even after an hour," he said. "And besides, while we try to use our scrum as a weapon in every match, we don't always play well off it. Wales were in that situation against the Wallabies last weekend, weren't they? They dominated the set-pieces, but didn't get the result."

Hartley's approach to top-level rugby has changed little since he first materialised on the Premiership scene half a dozen years ago: he always understood the value of unpredictability and continues to milk his otherness for all it is worth. He understands other things, too, partly as a consequence of undergoing some psychological profiling just recently.

"It was done on the basis of colours," he said. "If there was a lot of yellow about you, it meant you were outgoing and sociable. Blue meant you were introverted, and green stood for docile. I was very low on the green." And the red, a self-explanatory colour if ever there was one? "I think I had a lot of red, but I haven't read the findings that carefully. Attention to detail comes under blue, and there wasn't much blue in my make-up."

Long may Hartley continue to run a deficit on the blue-green side of the ledger, for England need a hooker with attitude. Just so long as it doesn't turn into an attitude problem.