not exactly. I got the impression that SL started off his selection process by weeding out the players he didn't see as totally sound, and then making the best team he could from the rest of them,.
a better starting point for a coach is perhaps to work out what's the best team you could have, and then work with the players to coach their attitude character and behaviour.
every successful team I've ever been involved in has contained one or two aggressive dicks who - frankly- no one particularly liked and could be a liability - but also the team had someone - captain, coach or teacher, who was able to work with the material they had, and could coach the disparate characters to create a team that trusted eachother on the pitch and worked together to play good rugby. That's a great coach. I am hoping EJ will be able to pull this off.
Let's take a look at a random coach. Call him Clive. Or Wayne.
There's a world in which they believe that the really good players - the ones that win you big trophies, the size of the World Cup - are character driven as much as they are rugby talented.
Clive picks rough tough players with a real edge to them - but ones who very rarely cross the line that Mr Hartley has, and certainly not to the same degree. Wayne has a lot of talent at his disposal, and makes character a central part of his team ethos. Both Wayne Clive win the World Cup.
If Hartley had any other kind of job, he'd have been fired by now. I look at all the excuses put forward by people supporting this decision, and it strikes me as being a) wildly optimistic, b) contrary to all available evidence and c) contrary to the values of the sport.
Let's take a quick look at how bad a boy Dylan has been: Gouging; biting; calling the referee a cheat; headbutting; elbowing.
He has, of course, been YCed for England, and had the biting been seen, would have been RCed for England.
It's an interesting choice. Had the SRU done this, I'd have written in protest. This is an indictment of England (and secondarily a helluva statement about the lack of captaincy options at your disposal)