Dylan Hartley got a six-month ban for gouging an England team-mate but made Wales coach eat humble pie. Now the happy hooker has France in his sights. The Independent on Sunday's Hugh Godwin writes.
"So what goes through the mind of an England hooker when the whistle goes for the first scrum against France, and the baleful eyes of Thomas Domingo, William Servat and Nicolas Mas are trained on you, and the dreams and fears of 80,000 Twickenham spectators and millions beyond are vested in your next move? "It's a feeler, the first one," says Dylan Hartley. "You don't know if they will go early, or drive you up, or take you down. You have to go in with a checklist that you're going to do every time. The French have a good front row, we've seen that. But if you sit there worrying about what they're going to do, you forget about yourselves and what you're good at."
"The scrum was talked about a great deal before England played Italy last weekend – and it was a non-event. In 80 minutes there were four put-ins, a total that will surely be exceeded next Saturday, with greater pressure on the pass and the man in possession, and red-zone penalties encouraging one side or the other to try their luck. How does Hartley see it going? "'Dylan Hartley crumbling', you mean? 'Dylan Hartley bottling it'? It doesn't happen." No, that wasn't the headline I had in mind. Just that it could be a match full of scrums? "You prepare for the best French team possible getting off that bus," he says. "We'll be prepared for that."
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