Eddie’s men paid high price for errors

EVEN the most hardened England fan cannot deny that Scotland deserved their first win at Twickenham for 38 years. Eddie Jones’ team just didnt turn up for this Calcutta Cup match.

Their penalty count was very high and I thought they were lucky not to be given a second yellow card in the second half.

Billy Vunipola would not have deserved his yellow for the high tackle on its own, but rightly paid the price for the cumulative count.

People often talk about teams ‘getting on the wrong side of the referee’ but it was more a case of England being put under so much pressure that they made mistakes. Maybe sometimes we don’t give enough credit to the opposition.

If you want to win Test matches, you can’t afford to give a high penalty count away. England cannot blame the referee for that.

However, Ellis Genge was very unfortunate to be penalised for the no-arms tackle. For me, that was not a no-arms tackle and was legal.

One thing that stood out for me was the scrums. I felt a few could have gone against Scotland. What frustrated me was how long it took for the scrums to get set up. The officials need to get them ready quicker and be more accurate in their decision-making. But, overall, I thought they did a decent job and no one can blame the referee for the result.

England will have to learn from that for when they face Italy.

Joy Neville made the correct call in spotting Finn Russell’s trip on Ben Youngs. That is what you want from your TMO, to come in and pick up what you didn’t see. You cannot stick a leg out like that. It was deliberate and a clear and obvious incident. Neville has been TMO for me a few times this season in the Pro 14 and has been excellent.

The game itself will not be remembered for its quality but will live long in the memory for the underdogs’ deserved win.

Meanwhile, France’s victory showed they are looking pretty good for the Grand Slam this year.

I’ve said for the past year or so that Antoine Dupont is the best player in the world. He proved it again yesterday, though he was very fortunate at the start of the second half when he jumped up to block a pass. I thought he knocked it forwards so it should have been a penalty and a yellow card.

For two relatively inexperienced referees across the two matches, I thought they had decent games. There will be things they got wrong and could improve but the most important thing is that the referees’ performances did not affect the outcome. The teams who should have won did so. That is how it should be.