16 England players and the captain doesn’t make it.
If not making the Lions squad was tough enough on Dylan Hartley, watching so many of his countrymen receive a ticket to New Zealand would only rub the salt further into those wounds.
But he’s dealt with it well – on the surface at least.
This can't have been easy https://t.co/E6Ybzl2DLo
— SportsJOE (@SportsJOEdotie) April 19, 2017
The English hooker was omitted from the British and Irish Lions tour despite Gatland naming 41 players on his squad on Wednesday.
Rory Best, Ken Owens, and Jamie George were all selected ahead of Hartley whose exclusion went down as one of the biggest shocks.
Running through the names for BT Sport, Brian O’Driscoll pondered why the England skipper might’ve been left out but he did it as diplomatically as he could.
“If you look at surprise omissions, I think the big stand-out one – well, there’s probably two – is Dylan Hartley,” the Irish legend said.
“People talked about him as a possible Lions captain and then for him not to make the squad…
“The second one is, in a very competitive second row, is Joe Launchbury.
“I think the question was if he was to go, he would have had to be captain. I’m just wondering whether it’s the type of environment where someone who is a leader in the way he does it for England would fit into that mould in a Lions situation.
“Sam Warburton was chosen as captain – rightly so – and I just wonder did Warren Gatland feel there was a… not potential for him [Hartley] to be decisive but that he might’ve been too strong a character.”
From an Irish point of view, Garry Ringrose, Keith Earls and Donnacha Ryan perhaps felt most hard-done-by but 11 names still got the nod to make the trip to the other side of the world in the summer.
