Gregor Townsend disappointed with Springbok loss and lack of consistency with referees

LACK OF CONSISTENCY: Gregor Townsend frustrated with the lack of consistency with the referees. Pic: ©INPHO/Craig Watson

Consistency. Not just an issue with Scotland, but with the officiating too.

England-Argentina wasn’t on the length of an ad break when Tom Curry smacked heads with Juan Cruz Mallia, got sent to the bin and subsequently had his punishment upgraded to red. He had to go.

Same pitch less than 24 hours later and Jessie Kriel’s head makes contact with Jack Dempsey’s. Two minutes on the clock. Not as ‘full-on’, mind, but the laws don’t go into that level of detail. Nor should they. Kriel should have walked. He didn’t.

That’s frustrating. And damaging for the ongoing debate swirling around health and safety as this game puts on its Sunday best and presents itself to parts of the world where it usually struggles to get a foot in the front door.

“I saw it about two screens away so it did look like a head-on-head collision and I was expecting the TMO to come in and make the referee aware of that,” said Scotland coach Gregor Townsend afterwards.

”Could it have changed the course of this 18-3 loss?

“Who knows? If it had been a red card… Last night a red card didn’t change the game in Argentina’s way, so who knows?” 

He wasn’t milking it but he wasn’t ignoring it either. Was it frustrating? Yes, he admitted. And so was the incident when Pierre Schoeman was stopped by a clearly illegal intervention by Cheslin Kolbe who then earned a penalty after Finn Russell shunted him.

To be fair to Townsend, he followed that observation with the fact that he spared most of his frustrations for their own efforts. We could delve deep into them, or just make the observation that they lost six lineouts in South African territory. That’s like fighting Ali with one arm behind your back.

“Disappointed. Really disappointed," said Townsend. "We were slow to get going in the first-half. There was a bit of inaccuracy in our own play but then we built into the game. I felt physically we were more up for the challenges South Africa bring and the way they play and we started to win penalties at scrum time, which was a real bonus.

“There were opportunities, not many, in our attacking game but there was a couple in the first-half and we needed to build on that second quarter but we started with some inaccuracies again and South Africa built on the points and it became difficult in those conditions against that defence to play from deep.

“It became risky and we never got the accuracy to trouble them on the scoreboard.”