From Rotorua to England captain: Dylan Hartley will lead England this weekend against Scotland in the Six Nations.

Proudly displayed inside the clubhouse of Crowborough Rugby Club is the first England age-grade shirt worn by Dylan Hartley.

Rather than a pristine white replica, it is very much the real thing, the real Dylan, caked in a combination of mud and Scottish blood.

"That epitomises what Dylan is all about," said Graham Callard, the club chairman and brother of Jon, the former England full-back. "I always smile when I look at it."

EDDIE KEOGH/REUTERS Dylan Hartley, middle, in the thick of the action against France in 2011.

The England captain has promised to send another shirt to the club to commemorate his new-found status after the Six Nations Championship.

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It remains to be seen whether it will be painted with any more Celtic claret.

Another of Hartley's England shirts can be found hanging in New Zealand at Rotorua Boys' High School alongside several All Black jerseys in the school's hall of fame. Not that anyone makes a distinction.

"We don't view the difference between the colour of the shirts, all that matters is that they played for the school and they have gone on to greater things," Gordon Hunt, the school's current first XV coach, said. "Around here we having a saying: 'Boys High Til We Die'."

Hartley grew up in Kaharoa, which, even by New Zealand standards, is seen as off the beaten track.

His father, Guy, is a carpenter, and there is a nice vignette in the Rotorua Review when a reporter informed him that his son was being made England captain against South Africa in 2012.

"That's the first I've heard about it," Guy told the reporter. "I've just got in from work. I'm not into this computer s***, and I don't have a cell phone."

Around Kaharoa, interests generally extend to rugby or nature. Hartley chose the former and ended up at Rotorua High. He belonged to the class of 2002, which won the national schools championship.

Team-mates included Liam Messam, the All Black flanker, and Kelly Haimona, the Italy fly-half.

The coach of that side was Chris Grinter, who was Jonah Lomu's first coach at Wesley College and provided a eulogy at his funeral.

He saw another spark in Hartley, then a loosehead prop, and was planning to make him the cornerstone of the 2003 side. Unbeknown to Grinter, Hartley already had bigger plans having made contact with a touring Sussex county team.

ENGLAND DREAM

His aunt and uncle lived in Crowborough and through them he came to meet Jon Pass, whose father, Dave, was coach at the local club and at Beacon Academy.

"He met us in this strange motel in Rotorua that had a hot tub in every room," Jon said. "He had this plan to play for England. I remember that determination. At 15, he decided: 'I am going to play rugby for England, that's my dream. That's where my family are from and that's what I am going to do.' Then he started putting pressure on my dad."

Within a couple of weeks, Hartley was on a plane out of New Zealand to open up a new chapter in his life.

"He was the first player in my experience to not complete year 13, the final year of high school, but go overseas and pursue the academy route," Grinter said.

"He identified rugby as a career pathway and went about deliberately planning how he could make that happen."

Initially, that was at Crowborough and Beacon Academy, where he soon started leaving his mark.

"Even at 16, he was really aggressive but in a positive, legal sense," Dave Pass said. "I had to close my eyes half the time that I was watching Dylan because his collision levels were frightening."

The aggression was not limited to just physicality as Jon, who would become a team-mate, attests. "He was a great sledger," he said. "He could talk the opposition fly-half out of ever catching the ball."

The other trait that marked him out was his dedication. When it was suggested that he change from prop to hooker, Hartley found a wall near his aunt's home, drew a few chalk targets on it and would spend hours practising his throws.

"He was relentless," Jon says.

Those extras paid off as he was called first into the Sussex county set-up before being invited to tryouts for England Under-18s and Under-19s.

It was there that he came to the attention of Worcester Warriors, who brought him into an academy that also included Tom Wood, Graham Kitchener, Miles Benjamin and Richard Blaze.

It made for a ferociously competitive environment. "He thrived because of that," said Andrew Stanley, the Warriors then academy manager.

He made just one appearance for Worcester in the Challenge Cup against Leeds, but made an impression on the senior pros including Craig Gillies, the second row.

"At 18 he was convinced he was ready to be given a shot in the first team," Gillies said. "He had confidence by the bucketloads to go with the ability."

ROUGH DIAMOND

By then news of this "rough diamond" had spread across the Midlands to Northampton, where Budge Pountney, the former Scotland flanker, was director of rugby.

"Clearly he had great ability, but his standout feature was his attitude," Pountney said.

"Rugby is a sport based on confrontation. If you are going to survive then you need that confrontational attitude and that fire in the belly. That's just what Dylan had."

Unfortunately, Hartley's propensity for confrontation has proved costly having received suspensions totalling 54 weeks for a rogue's gallery of offences.

Those who know him struggle to reconcile the inquisitive, thoughtful soul off the field with the man around whom red mist seems to trail on the pitch.

"He was a quiet, self-contained young man of great discipline and impressive demeanour," Grinter, his coach at Rotorua High, said.

"Some of his indiscretions in his professional playing career come as a shock. Maybe that's what playing for so many years in the front row does to you."

Hartley will never be short of character witnesses. Team-mates and coaches are unanimous about disowning the caricature the bans have painted.

Dorian West, the forwards coach at Northampton, describes how the 29-year-old is always the first player to pick up a broom after the game to sweep the changing room clean.

There is a reason that he became the youngest captain in Premiership history in 2009, a responsibility he will now assume for his country.

"He is a man of few words," Tom Wood, his Northampton team-mate, said.

"Some of the best team talks – and it takes a huge amount of character to be able to do it – is to say nothing. Often people think the bigger the game, the bigger the speech needs to be. Actually, the bigger the game, the bigger emotion and atmosphere.

"Dylan will just look everyone in the eye and say, 'Are you ready? Follow me.' You don't need a big Churchillian speech. I hope he brings a bit of that to the England team. If he does then they will be in a good place."