Wayne Rooney’s “passion” spilled over when he was sent off during Plymouth Argyle’s 2-1 win over Blackburn, according to his assistant.

The former England captain was dismissed from the dugout in the wake of Blackburn’s late equaliser after the Pilgrims felt there was a foul on Ryan Hardie in the build-up.

Morgan Whittaker scored the winner in the seventh minute of stoppage time, clinching a third successive home win for Argyle as they moved up to 14th in the Championship.

“He’s still passionate. You’ve all watched him play for many years and you know that passion is what drives him,” Pete Shuttleworth told BBC Radio Devon.

“He has still got that passion on the touchline.

“He likes to be calm and calculated at times as well and see the game, and that’s his management style, but you’re never going to take that out of Wayne.

“I don’t know what the exact sending-off was for, but he probably just reacted in that way and got sent off.”

Rooney is now likely to face a touchline ban as a result of his dismissal – and the red card also meant he was unable to address the media after the game.

But Shuttleworth, who was brought in by Rooney following his appointment as Argyle head coach in May, says he and the rest of the Plymouth bench are sorry for their actions.

“We were angry and in those situations that’s the passion that comes out. If we’ve offended anyone there at that point we apologise,” Shuttleworth added.

“We’re quite a nice bench really, we speak to officials in the right way most of the time, but that really angered us.

“Probably the frustration that we hadn’t killed the game by then, but also the fact that we were convinced it was a foul and it should have been given.

“You saw your hard work maybe going out of the window at that point, and that’s probably why the passion overstepped.

“We were desperate to win that game before the international break and get the result we deserved.”