Hartley keen to draw a line under bad-boy reputation

IT is said in a jokey tone, but through gritted teeth.

“Another incident? Why do we always have to talk about incidents?”

He’s joking, but underneath it, Dylan Hartley is deadly serious.

This, after all, is a man whose last two matches against Irish opposition have culminated in 10-week bans being issued by the citing commissioners, bringing into question a temperament that had seemed to be in check.

To rub it in, a knee injury then ensured he lost his England place to Ben Youngs.

Now, with Youngs struggling against Scotland on Saturday, Hartley is expected to be recalled to the England front line for the potentially titanic struggle against Ireland at the Aviva on Sunday.

Hartley knows he will be under pressure, and there will be intense scrutiny on him. After all, if you have been banned for eight weeks for biting Stephen Ferris during last year’s Six Nations, which was followed by a two-week ban for elbowing Rory Best during a Heineken Cup match with Ulster, the opposition will know they can get under your skin.

It is a reality that has plagued Hartley since he missed six months of rugby for eye-gouging back in 2007, yet one that he had seemed to be clear of.

Coloured anger-management charts are now part of Hartley’s preparation for matches, and he will have to keep his temper in check against Best on Sunday.

The latter is thought to be the front-runner for the Lions No.2 shirt, but Hartley still believes he can reel Best in — especially after already impressing Lions supremo Warren Gatland.

“Will the Ferris incident affect me this week? No, I don’t approach it any differently,” said the Northampton skipper at England’s training base yesterday.

“If anything, it makes me slightly more focused. Compare that to the last time I got a bit of a wind-up from the opposition camp (when Hartley produced perhaps his best performance for England after Gatland said he could ‘choke’ when playing Wales in 2011).

“That made me focus that little bit more. In preparation I’ll be aware that I might get a bit of stick from the crowd. From the opposition too? Maybe. The incident with Rory Best? We need to draw a line under it. Every weekend you respect the teams you play against and you respect your opponents. I have played against him once this year for Ulster. He is a key man in their team.

“Ireland have got plenty of class and he is one of their main guys in the choke tackle area. He is key to their success up front.”

And if Hartley is to go on the Lions tour then it would help if he performs better than the last time he started a match at the Aviva, when England were trounced in the final game of the 2011 Six Nations.

That match has been referred to constantly this week, and it was a chastening experience for all Englishmen that were there.

England were taken apart, but this young squad are not burdened by memories; only six of the team that started that day are likely to do so again this weekend.

“We just got blown away in the first 20 minutes of that game; the intensity they brought was unbelievable.

“When a team gets things right and they’ve got 50,000 people behind them, it becomes quite a daunting time on the field.

“After that we went back for the World Cup warm-up and talked about what had happened last time, approached that game differently and got a result.

“We haven’t called a meeting with me up front making a speech about what happened then. It’s more in training, chirping in bits along the lines of ‘if we play like this at the weekend, it won’t cut it’.

“We’ve got a good mixture of older lads who were there then and can relay what to expect, and young lads who have a no-fear attitude, which included going to Paris and winning.

“In 2011 we won the title but it didn’t feel like a celebration as the manner in which we got beat was bad.

“But on the flip side we beat them at Twickenham last year and they will want to restore a bit of pride against us, especially up front.

“We expect it to be 110%, especially at scrum time, from them.

“They’re not going to roll over, especially on home turf. We are expecting a bit of a response from last year.”

Perhaps the key for Hartley will be in ensuring he does not respond to provocation himself.