England’s discipline ‘verging on comical’ – DawsonFigure caption, ‘Chaos’ & ‘comedy refereeing’ as England beat ArgentinaByElizabeth BotcherbyBBC Sport journalistPublished4 hours agoFormer scrum-half Matt Dawson described England’s discipline as “verging on comical” after four players were shown yellow cards in the second half of their 31-24 win over Argentina.England were twice reduced to 13 players in Santiago del Estero, including in the final three minutes as Argentina – who themselves had three players yellow-carded – attempted to overturn a 14-point deficit to salvage a draw.The hosts were denied a shot at levelling the match when Bautista Delguy’s 83rd-minute try was controversially chalked off, after the television match official ruled Henry Slade’s last-gasp tackle had forced the Argentina wing into touch.
England’s gutsy victory moves them up to third in the Northern Hemisphere standings in the 2026 Nations Championship, backing up last Saturday’s 73-8 win over Fiji which ended a run of five defeats.
World Cup winner Dawson defended under-fire England head coach Steve Borthwick – saying his side have shown “definite progress” this month – but believes there is a big problem with their discipline.
England have received 14 yellows and one red card in eight matches in 2026 and only once in that run (against Fiji) have they avoided having a player sin-binned.
Poor discipline was a major factor in the four-match losing run that resulted in a fifth-placed finish in the Six Nations and Borthwick’s position as head coach coming under scrutiny.
“It’s been a hellishly tough two weeks for England. It started with 20 minutes of hell down in South Africa, to all of a sudden finding themselves dominating Argentina in the opening 40 minutes, so there has been real progress,” Dawson told BBC Radio 5 Sports Extra.
“I know the wagons are circling around Borthwick in certain parts of the media, but I think this performance showed they are on a pathway. Whether there’s enough progress to win a World Cup is another matter to be fully debated – I don’t think we are there yet – but there’s definite progress from the Six Nations.
“The one question we will continue to ask is what on earth are we going to do with England’s discipline? It’s verging on comical. It’s ridiculous how many cards this team have had so far in 2026.”
Borthwick hit back at questions about his team’s discipline, saying: “I don’t think now is the time to be digging into that.
“This team has done really, really well. It was a tough Test match, a fantastic Test match, we scored some wonderful tries and as ever you guys concentrate on the negativity.
“You’re like the negativity committee so it’s lovely coming and talking to you again.”
