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Dylan Hartley has missed training to place a question mark over him leading England in Saturday's Grand Slam decider.

Captain and hooker Hartley watched from the sidelines as his team-mates prepared without him for their French test under the watchful eye of head coach Eddie Jones.

The official line is that the Northampton Saints forward was resting, having trained earlier in the day, and that England are managing his workload. But they later took the unusual step of adding an extra hooker to their Paris-bound squad, making three in all.

Of those, only Hartley has started a Test match. Next in line is Luke Cowan-Dickie, whose two caps have come off the bench. Tommy Taylor, the third man, is uncapped.

England are already champions but want their first Grand Slam since 2003. The last time they completed a clean sweep on French soil was in 1923.

In pictures — England beat Wales:

Joe Marler did take part in training but lining up with the Possibles rather than Probables ahead of his disciplinary hearing on Wednesday night.

The Harlequins prop is expected to be banned from the Paris match, either for what appeared to be a forearm smash on Wales prop Rob Evans, or for alleged verbal use in calling Samson Lee ‘gypsy boy’.

Marler must wait longer to discover his fate in the latter, as Six Nations chiefs will not disclose their verdict until after his foul play hearing.

So he would have appreciated the intervention of Warren Gatland, who dismissed the episode during England's 25-21 win on Saturday as “a bit of banter as far as I’m concerned - and that’s what Samson said.”

The Wales boss added: “Joe said at half-time that it was just a bit of fun and Samson has no issue with it. It was the sort of banter on a rugby pitch that 20 years ago would have been sorted out with a few fists and forgotten.

“We don’t want to make much of that. I’m more concerned with the forearm smash on Rob Evans.”

Asked if there was a risk of sanitising rugby with microphones, cameras and social media, Gatland replied: “I think every aspect of life is like that.

“It’s becoming so PC that a massive issue is made over things. It was banter and we accepted the apology. But in modern-day sport, players have to be aware there are microphones and cameras everywhere and they have to act accordingly.”

One man sure to be in the thick of the action in France is Billy Vunipola, who insists England’s chumps-to-champs transformation has not been fuelled by a need to avenge their World Cup flop.

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The No.8 revealed: “Not one person came back into camp and said, ‘We are here to gain revenge’ or to try to reinvent ourselves. We never really talked about the World Cup.

“It was gone. I think it was something that happened for a reason so that other things could fall in line and here we are now.”