England
Comment: Dylan Hartley pays ultimate price for failing to stay under the radar
Tom Hamilton
May 29, 2015
Dylan Hartley
Dylan Hartley© (Photo by David Rogers/Getty Images)

A fortnight after Manu Tuilagi was removed from the World Cup mix after he pleaded guilty to three counts of assault, comes a second seismic blow for England.

There is no schadenfreude with Friday's announcement from England that Dylan Hartley will not be in the World Cup squad after he was handed a four-game ban for head-butting Jamie George last Saturday. Hartley is one of England's few players who can hold a candle to the claim of being, on their day, world class. Tuilagi falls in the same category but in the blink of a head connecting with another's and a moment when a young centre saw red, England have lost two key players before a fresh, crisp set of training kits have been sweated through at Pennyhill Park.

Hartley hasn't been to everyone's tastes but he is a paradox between his calm, personable and friendly off-field demeanour and those moments where common-sense is thrown to the wind and he forgets rhyme and reason. The latest four-game suspension - one that would see him miss England's three World Cup warm-up matches and their opener against Fiji - takes his collective tally to 54 weeks of bans. Given England will take three hookers to the World Cup, if one of the other hookers fell over the day before Fiji, they would only have one available No.2. It was too much of a risk.

Despite his extensive disciplinary record, Stuart Lancaster has stuck by him. Prior to the Six Nations he was handed a four-week ban for an elbow, Lancaster backed him. In the November Tests he was shown a yellow card for walking over Duane Vermeulen. It was a harsh yellow card and Lancaster stood by him. But the trust has now worn thin. For a man who has built his entire England ethos on culture and the players being symbiotically connected with the country as role models, these two incidents will have hurt him.

For Hartley he now has to comprehend how two momentous events in his rugby life have passed him by. First the British & Irish Lions in 2013 when two words levelled in the direction of Wayne Barnes saw him red carded and handed an 11-week ban. Opposite him on that day was hooker Tom Youngs, he ended up winning Lions Test caps in Australia. The man who was on the wrong end of his bonce on Saturday was Jamie George who was harshly left out of England's original long-list but may now be given a chance to press his claims. There is a horrible irony in both cases.

England do have other options. The front-row is currently an area of strength and it is Youngs who is now in the box seat. With England expected to take three hookers to the World Cup Luke Cowan-Dickie, Rob Webber and George will vie for the final two spots. Cowan-Dickie is yet to be capped but is a favourite of Lancaster while Webber is currently short of form but does have 12-caps of experience behind him. George has been an ever-present for Saracens this term but like Cowan-Dickie, he is yet to be capped.

In late March, Hartley faced the press. He had kept a low profile to date during the Six Nations ascribing to the cliché of letting his rugby do the talking but when pressed over his previous batches of ill-discipline he admitted it was playing on his mind. "This whole campaign for me has been about staying under the radar. I am more conscious of playing the game, doing my job. I am constantly thinking about it, constantly thinking about how the referee is seeing me, how he is viewing my actions, how I am carrying myself. I have been trying to focus on my rugby and so far it has been going well. I am not making good headlines but I am not making bad ones either. I am just quietly going about my business and enjoying it."

He stuck to that, until the 57th minute of their semi-final.

Unfortunately it is his head in a very literal and physical case which has proven to be the final straw for Lancaster. Hartley will come back from this, he is too good a player to just fall into the shadows and Lancaster has left the door open for him as an injury replacement, but this will hurt both player and country.

© Tom Hamilton

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