DECISION TIME FOR LANCASTER

England, it has been reported, will not hold Dylan Hartley’s red card last month, for elbowing the Leicester centre Matt Smith, against the hooker when the management amends its senior squad this month. The coaches, so it goes, regard the incident as petulant rather than violent, never mind that a broken nose could have been the outcome, and will not be carrying out last year’s threat of the head coach Stuart Lancaster.

Then he warned Hartley, who had been sent off in the Premiership final that May against Leicester, earning his third ban in two seasons, that his discipline had to improve otherwise England would have no use for him. “We thought long and hard about leaving out Dylan,” said Lancaster in August 2013. “I had a long chat with him after I returned from Argentina, wanting to be reassured he understood where the line was and what was right and wrong in terms of discipline. What we have always talked about since I have been in charge is that if you don’t have a rigorous approach to being disciplined then you hurt yourself because you concede points and go down to 14 men that makes it very hard to win international games.”

A few weeks later, at the Aviva Premiership launch, Hartley said he knew where he stood: “I sat down with Stuart and we had a chat. It wasn’t about him telling me, but I understand that he can’t keep giving me a chance. I’m basically on my last chance in the England set-up. That’s fully understood.”

It was not the first time Lancaster had had cause to speak to Hartley about discipline. Before England left for the 2012 tour to South Africa he said: “We will be sitting down with Dylan and explaining to him exactly what is required to be an international player. We have to be able to trust the players. If we can’t trust a player on the field then he won’t be selected. We will have a pretty strong conversation and he has to prove to us he is ready to come back into the Test arena. We will make sure he gets the message.”

Last year’s warning was delivered after a petulant, rather than a violent, act: Hartley was dismissed in the final for swearing at the referee Wayne Barnes and calling him a cheat, although in his defence the forward maintained his words had been addressed to the Tigers’ hooker, Ben Youngs. The disciplinary hearing did not believe his account and he was given an 11-week suspension.

He received three weeks for elbowing Smith, two for the offence, which was put at the low end of the scale by Jeremy Summers, the judicial officer who heard the case, and one for his poor disciplinary record. Had he not pleaded guilty, the ban would have been higher, as it would had Smith been injured.

An unnamed source in one newspaper said that the incident had in no way put Hartley’s international career in jeopardy, despite the warnings he received from Lancaster about the need for discipline in 2012 and 2013. The notion that the elbow on Smith was an act of petulance is risible: had he shoved the centre, it perhaps could have been described as such. Smith had been seeking a reaction by holding on to Hartley after clearing the hooker out of a ruck, and the one he got was far more violent than petulant.

Anyway – and if the England management had anything to say about Hartley’s Test future it should surely have been public – it was a non-violent act that earned the Northampton captain his “last chance” warning in 2013. If the report is true, it amounts to an act of contortion because England need a player who was not only their most capped in the autumn but remains their leading set-piece hooker whose throwing in to the lineout is superior to that of Tom Youngs and Rob Webber.

Lancaster will not have been amused, and not just because when he next faces the media he will be asked how many final warnings Hartley will receive. England’s opening match in the Six Nations is against Wales in Cardiff, and while the hooker was the subject of a wind-up by Warren Gatland ahead of the 2011 match between the sides at the Millennium Stadium, the target was how Hartley handled pressure rather than provocation.

Wales will goad Hartley from the start, and so will every other one of England’s opponents right through the year, which ends with the World Cup that the Rugby Football Union is hosting. Northampton got away with going down to 14 men so early against Leicester, but it is not a handicap Lancaster will want to experience.

Hartley said after his dismissal in the Premiership final that he had no intention of consulting a sports psychologist, but if his international career is to end naturally – and by signing a new contract with Northampton he declared his intent of playing for England beyond the World Cup – he will need to find another way of releasing frustration.

His director of rugby at Northampton, Jim Mallinder, said his captain was someone who lived on the edge, and Hartley is far from alone there, but four suspensions in three calendar years and an accumulation of bans in his career that is only a few weeks short of a year suggest he too often falls off it.

The question for Lancaster is whether Hartley is an asset or a liability. The head coach was unimpressed in November when Hartley was sent to the sin-bin for trampling on Duane Vermeulen as the No8 slowed down the home side’s ball at a ruck and with him went England’s comeback.

Hartley was left out of the next match against Samoa, which he may have been anyway, only to return against Australia the following week. It may come down to what takes longer to crack: making Hartley’s temperament on the field as equable as it is off it or getting Youngs’s line-out throwing to the standard of his rival’s.

• This is an extract taken from the Breakdown, the Guardian’s weekly rugby union email. Sign up here.