Scotland give feedback on Calcutta Cup decisions but plan is to 'take referee out of the equation'

Wales are the visitors to Murrayfield on Saturday in round four of the Six Nations. Title hopes are all but gone for the Scots who are determined to return to winning ways after back-to-back defeats by Ireland and England.

The latter pipped Gregor Townsend’s side by a point at Twickenham 11 days a go in a match which saw the home side benefit from a number of questionable decisions by referee Pierre Brousset. It was the first time the French official had taken charge of a Six Nations match and he didn’t cover himself in glory.

Townsend questioned the award of the penalty that allowed England to go 16-10 ahead and there also appeared to be no conclusive evidence of Tommy Freeman grounding the ball for England’s only try. To make matters worse, Brousset forced Finn Russell to take his late conversion from around two metres wider than where Duhan van der Merwe had touched the ball down for the try that brought Scotland to within a point of their hosts. Russell pulled his attempt wide of the post and England held on to win 16-15.

John Dalziel, the Scotland forwards coach, said they had given feedback on the performance of the officials but added he had a degree of sympathy with referees given the level of scrutiny they faced.

“There's cameras all over, it's a tough situation for the referee,” said Dalziel.

“We've just followed the process as normal in terms of feedback, so we've been through that. But I think the big thing for us is we just want to concentrate on the opportunities we had and to take the referee out of the equation in the game. I think that's the only way we can move forward is to look at the opportunities we had - we had more than enough - and focus on what we can do better.

“There's a process that you go through every week [around feedback on referees], Gregor's more aware of that but we've not made a big deal of anything around that. We've looked more at the decisions and sometimes the interpretation, we've looked at bits of what we can do better as well within that and also the letter of the law.

“The issues in the game were with us, it wasn't anything to do with the referees, so we'll look at that and I think that's a strong place for us because we can control that.”

Italy’s Andrea Piardi will referee this weekend’s match at Murrayfield and Scotland will name their team to play Wales on Thursday. Dalziel admitted there was a big decision to be made around who plays on the right wing. Kyle Rowe, the Glasgow Warriors player, impressed in the role at Twickenham but Edinburgh’s Darcy Graham is available again after missing the England match as he recovered from a concussion sustained against Ireland in round two.

“That is a real dilemma because of the pressure that the back three players are all putting on each other,” said Dalziel. “We're lucky to have that quality around there with Kyle, and we've seen Darcy running about [on Tuesday] and him being fit is great so we'll make that decision.”