The England hooker Dylan Hartley put his international future in jeopardy nine months before the World Cup when he was sent off for elbowing an opponent during Northampton’s 23-19 win over Leicester, receiving his second red card in 18 months.
Hartley, the 28-year-old Saints captain, was dismissed 16 minutes into the east Midlands derby for reacting to being held by Matt Smith by elbowing the centre in the face. The referee, JP Doyle, felt the offence merited a yellow card, but was persuaded to upgrade the offence by the television match official, Sean Davey. Hartley will have a disciplinary hearing next week, his fourth in the last 30 months.
Elbowing carries a minimum two-week ban, but Hartley, who has won the 61 cap, has a poor disciplinary record – he has been banned for a total of 47 weeks for four offences since 2007 – and that would be taken into account. When Hartley was sent off in the 2013 Premiership final, also against Leicester, he was told by Stuart Lancaster, the England head coach, that he was in “the last-chance saloon” and that one more bad breach of discipline would end his Test career.
Northampton will urge the disciplinary panel to be lenient with Hartley. “Dylan was being held by Smith but he should have kept his arms down,” said the club’s director of rugby, Jim Mallinder, whose team will go into the Christmas period on the top of the Premiership after beating Leicester despite playing most of the match a man short. “Dylan plays on the edge and he is competitive. You won’t change him, but sometimes it does not work out for him. I am not saying what Dylan did was right, but Smith went down easily, which was disappointing, and a yellow card would have been sufficient. There was no malice in what he did.”
It was the sixth red card in matches involving Northampton and Leicester in the past four years and the Tigers’ director of rugby, Richard Cockerill, had no sympathy for Hartley. “If you strike someone inthe face, you will get into trouble,” he said. “You would havethought he might have learned his lesson by now.”
