Dylan Hartley: 'If I can add something, the past 20 years haven’t been wasted'

Not too long ago, Charlie Taylor was looking round at Dubai Sharks training and counting the number of players. He would reach three, and that would be it.

Even as recently as last September, when the club was on to its fourth new home venue in as many seasons, things did not always run smooth.

The Sharks had to call in a favour from their sponsors for a loan of some temporary, solar-panelled floodlights so they could play and train out of the heat of the day.

Memories of which must make the events of the past few weeks seem even more surreal than they already are.

“I’ve had a lot of pinch-myself moments lately,” said Taylor, the chairman of the Sharks, a community rugby club whose men’s side play in the UAE Division 1.

“I have been sat at home having a barbecue with friends and I’ve had to say, ‘Oh, sorry guys, got to take this call, it’s Dylan Hartley.’ They told me to shut up.”

Yeah, right. Just the 97-cap former England captain on the blower. Ringing to discuss details of his appointment as director of rugby at the Sharks, no doubt. Of course he was.

In actual fact, he was. On Tuesday evening, it was confirmed Hartley will be relocating from the UK to Dubai, where he will juggle his role with the Sharks with a job in business development with Access Hire Middle East – the equipment rental company who do that decent line in floodlights.

The 400 or so playing members at the club – as well as the wider rugby community in the Middle East – will be abuzz at the news. But they are not the only ones.

“I throw myself back to when I was a kid, and when a local rugby player for a local team would come along, how excited I got as a kid,” Hartley, 36, said.

“When you play the game for as long as I did, to the level I did, you