Warren Gatland names his British and Irish Lions squad in the tranquil setting of Syon Park next Wednesday, a venue that is within earshot of the stadium at Twickenham. As he and his management team ponder the final few names in the 37 for New Zealand, that of the England captain, Dylan Hartley, will already have provoked long debate.
Gatland picked Hartley in the 2013 squad for Australia only for the then Northampton captain to be sent off in the Premiership final at Twickenham and receive a long ban that ruled him out. No sooner had Gatland mentioned the hooker as a potential captain for this summer's tour than Hartley was shown another red card for clouting Sean O'Brien in the face at a ruck while playing for the Saints against Leinster.
Hartley has remained an outsider for the captaincy with the bookmakers ever since and several pundits feel his form for England in November and during the Six Nations does not merit a place in the squad. The leadership is set to be retained by Sam Warburton, with the knee injury suffered by the Wales flanker last Friday night at Ulster while playing for Cardiff Blues expected to keep him out for no more than six weeks. Warburton is a player in form and has long had a strong working relationship with Gatland.
Gatland and his team have to decide not just whether Hartley should be in the 37 – and if he were ruled out on the grounds of form what would that mean for some of Gatland's Wales players, such as Jonathan Davies, Leigh Halfpenny and George North who this season have been nowhere near the heights they reached four years ago – but, if they considered him during the tour to be the second or third hooker in line, would he deal with disappointment or be disruptive?
Picking a Lions squad is not just about playing form. Character and temperament are factors. Gatland, in his long coaching career, has talked about sappers, players who respond to being left out of the starting line-up or match-day 23 by moaning to others in the squad or sulking, sapping energy and morale.
Hooker looks one of the most open positions in the squad. While Gatland and his coaches have to decide whom to leave out in the second and back rows, the head coach's playing position is a case of whom to include with no one standing out. Hartley, his England deputy, Jamie George, Wales's Ken Owens and the Ireland captain, Rory Best, are the leading contenders but there is no clear Test starter.
Best profited from Hartley’s suspension in 2013, called into the squad having been left out, and of all the hookers in contention, Hartley most resembles Gatland as a player, and not just because he is also a New Zealander. There is a mental hardness about him and, if his career has included not infrequent pleas to disciplinary committees, it has also been successful.
Just as Wales retained the Six Nations title in 2013, so England under Hartley have this year. The champions will probably supply more players than any of the other home unions and should be well represented in the forwards. Hartley, whether a Test starter or not, would have a role to play as someone they look up to. Even James Haskell, not someone to regurgitate words that have been shoved into his mouth, recently stressed the importance of Hartley to England's revival under Eddie Jones on and off the pitch.
A tour to New Zealand is the ultimate challenge for the Lions. They have only once won a series there, back in 1971 when, for all their array of natural talent behind the scrum, it was their ability to take on and overcome the All Blacks at forward that tilted the balance.
Can the Lions afford to omit their most proficient hooker in the set pieces, Hartley? Unlike Australia four years ago and South Africa in 2009, the warm-up matches will be more than contact training sessions. Gatland will have minimal preparation time and his squad will have three matches in their first 10 days in New Zealand, the second against the Blues and the third against the Crusaders.
With the Highlanders and the Maori All Blacks following in the second full week of the tour before the first Test, any faultlines in the squad will be quickly exposed. Unity, as the 1993 tour to New Zealand showed when a number of dirt-trackers went off piste, is everything. Which is why selection is so uniquely difficult: a number of players used to being first choice for club and country will be on the bench in the first Test; more will be in the stand.
Will Carling was the England captain in 1993 when he went on the tour to New Zealand. He played in the first Test but then lost his place to Scott Gibbs, who was converted to inside-centre by the Lions' coach Ian McGeechan during the trip. Carling was the most high-profile player in the squad and his demotion was mocked by the local media but he won them round by the character he showed when the midweek team collapsed around him at Hawke's Bay and Waikato before the final two Tests.
If Gatland is satisfied that Hartley would show the same resolve, the same selflessness to put the success of the trip before himself, the hooker will not become the third successive England captain to miss out on the Lions after Chris Robshaw and Steve Borthwick, the forwards coach this summer. For all the attention lavished on who will be the captain, the Lions will need many more than one leader.
On form, Owens and Best would shade Hartley with George adding impact, but it will come down to more than that. The 2009 and 2013 tours were largely Welsh and Irish productions, the countries supplying 13 players in the second Test in South Africa and the third in Australia. There will be much more white this time and leaving out England’s leader would be a far bigger call than in 2009 and 2013.
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