Argentina's Agustin Creevy helping Dylan Hartley take England to the next level on quest for Rugby World Cup glory

The Pumas captain is the beating heart of his side, and Hartley believes that he can learn a thing or two from his rival hooker in order to step up his own game as well as his team's

Dylan Hartley believes he can take a page out of Argentina captain Austin Creevy's playbook (Getty)

There’s no looking beyond the fact that England are expected to come through their Test against Argentina unscathed, even if the Pumas are good enough on their day to turn over just about any side in the world. The problem is that amid that expectation, how does Eddie Jones’ side get better?

Having won 19 of their 20 matches under the Australian and playing second-fiddle to only the All Blacks in the world rankings, that’s a tougher question to answer than you might think.

But for Dylan Hartley, the England captain who will lead out his side at Twickenham on Saturday, the answer will be starting him right in the dace. Its name is Agustin Creevy, the Argentina hooker and captain that by all accounts has left quite the impression on Hartley from their battles in the summer on England’s tour of Argentina.

“He makes them tick,” said Hartley. “He is their man. He’s unbelievable. Everything goes through him. The scrum, he loves to carry the ball, he loves to be in the rucks turning ball over, he’s a big player for them.

“Being the centre of their scrum as well, the hooker’s the leader of your scrum, that’s an area that we’ve challenged ourselves to be better at, and he’s in the thick of that. It’s what makes them tick so if we can put pressure there, it could tell in other areas of the game.”

The lessons here are more important for Hartley than any other player currently in Jones’ squad. Despite the 31-year-old being the most experienced member of the England team, he clearly understands that he still has room to improve if he is to help this current crop of internationals close the gap to New Zealand that Jones has been so vocal in identifying.

Hartley praised Creevy's ability to inspire his team (Getty)

That goes for the squad as a whole. After securing two hard-fought victories over the Pumas in the summer with a severely understrength team due to British and Irish Lions call-ups, Saturday’s encounter should be a much more simple affair against an opposition that has not beaten the Red Rose since 2009.

But Jones has already laid down the gauntlet by ordering for a much-improved showing, and Hartley reiterated the point and identified that the set-piece and penalty count are the two biggest areas of concern.

“We want it to be a better performance in a team that’s evolved since the summer,” Hartley added. “Results were good in the summer but there were things in the game that weren’t quite good enough. Set-piece for one. We were on the wrong side of too many penalties. There were loads of positives but that for one has been a big work-on for us, a big focus.

“Obviously you’re playing Argentina, what makes them tick? [The] Set-piece. Who’s in the middle of that? Creevy, the captain. He makes them tick. I want us to evolve as a team and pull away. I want us to be so much better than we were in the summer.”

Creevy has captained Argentina since 2014 (Getty)

Quite where that next level is is an intriguing thought. England’s form since Jones replaced Stuart Lancaster two years ago has put them up with the All Blacks, having matched their world record run of 18 consecutive victories. From a team that crashed out of the Rugby World Cup at the earliest stage, England can legitimately claim that they are among the two best sides on the planet, but that comes with its problems.

One of those is that they now have something of a target on their back, but Hartley feels that simply being England is enough to warrant an extra motivation among their opposition.

“I don’t know what other teams want to do,” he explained. “Naturally just being England we’ve always had a target on us anyway.

“We’re not the surprise any more. We expect to give people a good hard game and I think people know that. Maybe we do have a target and we have to be better now.

Hartley believes England need to perform better than they did in the summer (Getty)

“Belief’s been a growing thing, but belief’s 100 per cent there now in the team that we can be better, that we can get to No 1 and we can win a World Cup. If you don’t have these kind of goals, these dreams, and you don’t talk about these things, I don’t think you’ve got any chance of achieving them, and as a team we want to get better, we want to be No 1, we want to win a World Cup. You’ve got to talk about it.”

That journey starts on Saturday as England enter the two-year build-up to Japan 2019, and it is only a year until they lock horns again with the All Blacks for the first time since 2014. With 12 matches between now and that encounter, games such as this one will be crucial in finding out where that next level is. Fail to do so, and as Hartley is so aware of, England stand next-to-no chance of winning the World Cup.