Eddie Jones gambles on Dylan Hartley to toughen up England and restore power of the pack

Saints captain takes over from Robshaw despite poor disciplinary record - and claims he is ready to handle the responsibility

Newly appointed England captain Dylan Hartley, right, and head coach Eddie Jones give a press conference on Monday (Getty)

“The biggest risk is not taking a risk,” said Eddie Jones in confirming Dylan Hartley as England captain for the forthcoming Six Nations Championship.

It was a super-smart way of justifying his decision to replace the blameless, honest-to-goodness flanker Chris Robshaw with someone carrying just a little more baggage. Had the new red-rose coach tried to present his choice of skipper as a safe bet, he would have been laughed all the way back to his native Australia.

Jones has canvassed opinion from a range of people since moving to Twickenham before Christmas, some of them situated close to the heart of the game in this country and others from far-flung parts of the union landscape, and his overriding sense is that England have gone soft up front. He intends to harden them up without further ado, so while Hartley has more previous than a career criminal, the captaincy call has a basis in logic.

“We need to change England – we need to get back to what the world fears about them,” Jones explained. “That comes down to the forward pack. When I was coaching Australia against them, we worried about their strong scrum, their strong driving maul, their uncompromising clean-out at the ruck. We felt if we could get parity there, we’d win the game. Dylan is experienced in international rugby, he plays in that way, he’ll lead in that way and people will follow him.”

And with Hartley sitting silently, no doubt pondering top-level sport’s extraordinary habit of turning life on its head, Jones had a few words to say about the man who can no longer consider himself England captain. “Let’s get one thing right,” the coach said. “This is not about what Chris Robshaw didn’t do as a leader. It’s been a difficult time for him but he did a fantastic job for four years. He’s disappointed, but I think the next part of his career will be the best part. He’s easily the best blind-side flanker in England and by the end of the Six Nations, I hope he’ll be the best in Europe.”

Even though Hartley was being written up as a captain-in-waiting as early as mid-December, he received nothing by way of confirmation until he arrived in camp on Sunday night. “I had the call to come down for a meeting,” reported the 29-year-old, New Zealand-born front-rower. “I was a bit nervous. Eddie asked me if I wanted to do the job and held out his hand, which I think I snapped off. Chris also offered me his hand, congratulated me and said, ‘If there’s anything you need, I’m here for you’. That’s testament to the bloke.”

Chris Robshaw congratulated Hartley on getting the captaincy and offered to help him in any way (AFP)

There has been a fair bit of testimony produced on behalf of Hartley since he first broke into the Northampton team the best part of a decade ago: he has missed more than a year of rugby through suspension and the range of his misdemeanours – gouging and biting, stamping and butting, taking a distinctly Anglo-Saxon approach to calling the referee a cheat during a Premiership final – is of deadly sin proportions.

But at his best – and he will have to perform at somewhere near the optimum to hold off his young understudies, Jamie George of Saracens and Luke Cowan-Dickie of Exeter, he is the nearest thing England currently have to a world-class tight forward. The principal gamble from Jones’ point of view is not whether he can stay on the right side of the law for two games in succession, but whether he can rescale the heights quickly after weeks and months in the doldrums.

This has not escaped the coach’s notice. Asked whether he had made his choice on the basis that Hartley was currently the form hooker in the country, or that he would be by the time England play Scotland at Murrayfield a week on Saturday, or that hardened Test experience trumped everything else, Jones was crystal clear.

“Experience is definitely the thing,” he said. “When I’m picking for international games, it’s not only on Premiership form. You can be the best Premiership player in your position and not be the best Test player. That’s the reality of it.”

For Hartley, the realities of his new responsibility will kick in soon enough: he can expect a very hard week in training – “his butt will be hanging on the ground by Friday,” Jones promised – and there will be a thousand details to nail down off the field. But after weeks of speculation, he can at least crack on with the job.

“I feel as though I’m prepared,” he said. “I’ve been through thick and thin with Northampton, so I believe I know how to handle scrutiny. If I give people stuff to write, they’ll write it. The key thing is to stay off Twitter. And anyway, I can’t read.”