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England captain Dylan Hartley is back in the England side to face Ireland in their final Natwest 6 Nations at Twickenham on Saturday.
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He missed the France game due to a calf injury.
“I was close, so it was frustrating to miss out and frustrating to watch the game as well. You never want to be out of the team.”
England slumped to second defeat of the Championship and a third loss would represent their worst performance in the tournament since 2006.
“I believe in the group here, I believe in what we are doing, I believe in where we are going. Just because we’ve lost two games doesn’t make us a bad team. Look, in any success story there is bumps along the way. At the moment we’ve experienced a couple of bumps – it’s how we come out the other side of it and keep on working.”
“The hardest lessons to learn are usually off the back of losses. They are great learning experiences and I think for the team I think it has been a good experience for us. You cannot recreate those without losing big games.”
“The train is not off the tracks, it is just a small bump in the journey of where we are going and as long as we learn lessons from it and remember how this feels and do everything we can to not let these same things happen again, it is only a good thing for us.”
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“I think as an experience as a group it has been a bloody good for us, not one I would like to see repeated too often, but I do think it will be a worthwhile tool for us going forward.”
“We’re not a bad team, we’re still a bloody good team and the best way we can prove this is to win this weekend.”
Standing in their way is an Ireland team chasing just their third ever Grand Slam.
“They’re a good team and that’s why they’ve won the tournament, deserving winners and on a rich vein of form as well. So they’ve got a well, well executed game plan that they play and I think just for us it is a great challenge.”
“The tournament for us has been been disappointing and it is a great challenge for us to finish the tournament on a high to play the champions and go for a result there.”
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England’s struggles at the breakdown have been highlighted throughout the Six Nations, particularly against France. Hartley admits it’s an area that the team have worked on this week.
“Technically-wise and fitness-wise we can’t change a whole lot in four days, but what we can do is highlight certain areas that we think and going to try and change mindsets around that sort of area of the game.”
“There is more rucks in the game now, I think there has been an increase of 20 per cent more rucks, so naturally there is going to be more contests at the breakdown and more turnovers at the breakdown. So I think just highlighting just a few key points in the last four days has been really important for us.”
“You’ve got to play heads up, you’ve got to send appropriate numbers. There is no point saying we are going to send three people to this ruck when it is not needed. We encourage the guys to play with their heads up, make the right decisions, back decisions – even if they’re not the right ones, make them good decisions. No it is not something that we’ve put down in black and white what we are going to do, just encouraging the guys to make good decisions.”
Hartley’s position in the team has been questioned in some quarters, with the British and Irish Lions starting hooker Jamie George pushing for the number two jersey, but the Northampton man is not bothered by outside chatter.
“If opinion, publicists and writers and column-fillers had their way I’d probably have retired a long time ago, but I am not even quietly motivated, I am openly motivated to keep pushing on, to keep getting better, to keep playing and that’s all I do.”
“(playing) for England – the ultimate goal is the Rugby World Cup yeah – but for my career I don’t know, keep going. I feel bloody good at the moment, I trained well yesterday, so I just have to play well this week.”
