To coach England at rugby union is to spend a disproportionate amount of time awaiting disciplinary verdicts. In picking up a four-week ban that will rule him out of England’s opening World Cup match, Dylan Hartley may also have stretched the patience of Stuart Lancaster beyond breaking point. Faith and trust, those two essential twin pillars of the head coach’s regime, have been undermined once more.
It could be that Lancaster has already reached his own exasperated private verdict. Can he really afford to go into the World Cup carrying a hooker with Hartley’s penchant for getting himself into disciplinary trouble at the worst possible times? At no stage since he was first capped in 2008 has the 29-year-old’s future grip on the England starting jersey been so tenuous.
Missing three warm-up games and the pool fixture against Fiji is not, in the end, what this was all about. England will take three hookers to the World Cup and, if one is unavailable for the matches against France (home and away), Ireland and the Fijians, short-term cover will be available. Hartley, however, is increasingly running the risk of undermining both his own reputation and that of those who continue to pick him, despite an increasing pile of reasons not to.
Worst of all, following on from Manu Tuilagi’s recent expulsion from the squad, is the growing public perception that experienced England internationals feel they can act in precisely the manner Lancaster and others have repeatedly warned them not to. To be clear, Hartley’s latest offence was by no means the most heinous ever committed. In some ways, though, the unnecessary aspect of the Northampton player’s unprovoked head-drop into the face of his Saracens rival Jamie George was more of a concern to the management than the actual physical contact.
We are talking here about the long-serving captain of the Premiership’s table-toppers, playing in a key semi-final in front of his own adoring supporters in a World Cup year. Yet still he could not resist a bit of bone-headed niggle against a younger opponent, which, had the referee seen it clearly, would more than likely have reduced his team to 14 men in their biggest game of the season.
It is that recurring inability to maintain control, regardless of circumstances, that will worry Lancaster most. Hartley has many admirable qualities – leadership ability, determination, off-field perspective and a dry sense of humour – but there are only so many times he can let his coaches down. If England’s starting hooker throughout the World Cup is not Leicester’s Tom Youngs, it will now be a surprise.
Those who take the contrary view – that feistiness in a hooker is a good thing, that Hartley’s latest offence was little more than an old-school nuzzle, that he is primarily the victim of his reputation etc – are forgetting the higher judge drumming his fingers on his desk in Leeds. It is only a matter of months since Lancaster was telling everyone who cared to listen he had made it “crystal clear” to Hartley that he was on his final warning.
If Hartley was a marked man before, he certainly is now. He might as well paint a target on his forehead for every World Cup opponent to aim at, confident in the knowledge he is unlikely to resist a retaliatory dig at some stage. This is a player who has already missed a Lions tour after being sent off for swearing at a referee in a major game at Twickenham and had Northampton beaten Saracens last Saturday he would have missed this year’s final. There have already been signs this season that his impact has been diluted by not wanting to stray across the line of on-field acceptability; this latest citing is hardly going to help improve that situation.
It leaves Lancaster in a quandary. Does he completely ditch one of his senior men at such a late stage or give him yet another final warning? Is Exeter’s uncapped Luke Cowan-Dickie ready to hook for England in a high-pressure Test, given that the other potential deputy for Youngs, Rob Webber, cannot currently make Bath’s first team?
Perhaps most depressing of all, is all his work on improving team culture and encouraging personal responsibility falling on deaf ears? One little butt has left England’s coaches with a big dilemma.
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