A captain leads but is not always a leading player. Eddie Jones attracted scorn when he suggested some players were poor at club level but outstanding on the international field and vice versa, but history suggests he had a point.
Jones was explaining why he intended to retain Dylan Hartley as his captain despite the hooker’s lack of form for Northampton and the perceived greater individual qualities offered by Saracens’ Jamie George. If his choice of language was suspect – anyone who was a poor club player would not stay in the first team for long – it was not difficult to understand where he was coming from.
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