KEY POINTS:
Straight out of left field and with a style all his own, the ranks of hookers have produced another strikingly eccentric individual - a New Zealander who might very easily play for England in this year's World Cup, despite his current uncapped status.
Dylan Hartley, of Rotorua, is a one-off. This much is obvious the moment he takes the field for Northampton, his gait peculiarly unathletic, his wild hair scrunched any old how into an unusually garish headgear.
With the ball in his hands, he can do brilliant things; Brian Ashton, the England coach, says he has the skills of a centre and means every word of it. Opposition forwards have been queueing up to thump him recently, so he must be doing something right.
If he gets his act together, he could fill the front-row gap left by his injured club-mate, the World Cup-winning hooker Steve Thompson.
"England? It's not on my radar at the moment," Hartley insisted last week, fresh from participating in a courageous derby victory at Leicester.
"OK, I'd be lying if I told you it hadn't crossed my mind, especially as Steve is out for the foreseeable future. But I'm still learning the trade. I was a loosehead prop until I came here at the start of last season and it's only now that I have any prospect of a run of first-team games. And anyway, I've just had my butt kicked by the conditioning staff for being too fat."
Hartley, 21 later this month, was a Kiwi until England made him theirs by fast-tracking him into the second-string Saxons team for last month's games with Italy and Ireland.
What made him leave New Zealand? "I got to the end of the school year in 2002 and wanted to see somewhere else. I had an uncle and cousins in Sussex, so the decision was easy. I just wanted to cruise along for a while - and joined the local rugby club. It was from there that I got involved with the England Under-18s set-up."
"It never crossed my mind to try and make a name for myself in New Zealand. I played for the first XV at Rotorua Boys High School and had a game or two for Bay of Plenty under-18s, but the competition there is so intense it's frightening."
"I was at school with Liam Messam [currently playing loose forward for the Chiefs] and he really was outstanding. An awful lot of bloody good players don't even get close, so coming to England wasn't the hardest decision. "
"My premiership debut as hooker? Away at Leicester," he recalled. "We were smacked, 32-0. I learnt quite a bit that day, most of it from Julian White, who was propping for them. It was pretty painful."
He is terribly young, but so were Sean Fitzpatrick and Phil Kearns at first.
- INDEPENDENT
