It all hinges on his rap sheet and the nature of his latest crime.
Stephen Ferris went on Sky Sports Saturday afternoon to analyse his old team Ulster as they took on Clermont in the Champions Cup, but before that he was asked for his thoughts on the rugby story of the weekend… namely Dylan Hartley’s sending off for trying to decapitate Seán O’Brien.
First, a disclaimer. Ferris and Hartley have previous. When we say previous we mean Hartley was banned for eight weeks for going all Hannibal Lector on the back-row.
With Hartley leading Ferris’s friend Rory Best in recent opinion polls to be named 2016 Lions captain, it was presumably not without some glee that Ferris all but ruled Hartley out of the running but he did so logically, not emotionally.
Ferris pointed out that Warren Gatland will be hard-pressed to name Hartley his captain if he misses the majority of the Six Nations through suspension and Ferris gave two very important factors that may feed into him receiving a substantial ban.
His track record (see below) and the nature of his crime, namely a high shot.
“I’m not sure he can be Lions captain if he is not going to play too many games for England in the Six Nations. It depends how many weeks is he going to get? His track record, obviously, he is not going to get entry level cut to three,” said Ferris.
“The amount of press there has been regarding high tackles, high shots, especially Ireland versus New Zealand, every time you picked up a paper there seemed to be a high shot mentioned.
“He could get 10-12 weeks. If he is not going to play for England, how can he captain the Lions?”
"I'm not sure he can be Lions captain"… another former victim of Dylan Hartley, @StephenFerris6, has his say on Friday night pic.twitter.com/dXE3tsAITf
— Mikey Stafford (@me_stafford) December 10, 2016
Interestingly, a 12-week ban would see Hartley available in early March, in time for defending champions England’s final two games against Scotland and Ireland.
That should be fun.
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