Gregor Townsend admits fears over Scotland prop Zander Fagerson's World Cup participation after red card in France win

Scotland coach Gregor Townsend faces an anxious few days while he waits to discover whether Zander Fagerson will be suspended for the start of the Rugby World Cup in France next month.

Scotland's Zander Fagerson looks dejected as he is shown a red card during the win over France.

The tighthead prop was sent off in the second-half of the stirring 25-21 victory over the host nation at Murrayfield on Saturday as the home side came back from 21-3 down at half-time. Fagerson’s dismissal, for a dangerous ruck clearout, was given initially as a yellow card but was referred to the ‘Foul Play Review Officer’, a new disciplinary feature which allows an off-field official in the so-called ‘bunker’ eight minutes to decide whether an incident is worthy of a more draconian punishment. The verdict was that it was, and Fagerson’s punishment was upgraded to red. Scotland rallied impressively, scoring two tries while short-handed to turn the match around.

Fagerson has been sent off for Scotland before, for a similar incident in the 2021 Six Nations match against Wales. He picked up a four-match ban on that occasion. The same suspension would see him ruled out of Scotland’s opening two World Cup matches, against South Africa and Tonga, as well as the remaining two warm-up games, against France away next weekend and Georgia at home on August 26. “Automatically any red card would go to a hearing and we'd expect that to be done by Tuesday or Wednesday,” said Townsend. “It would affect our plans for next weekend and our World Cup squad is announced a week on Wednesday so we'll need to know before then.”

WP Nel was his usual reliable self when he came off the bench to fill the gap at tighthead but the 37-year-old will need cover if Fagerson is suspended. The relatively inexperienced Murphy Walker and Javan Sebastian are Townsend’s other two options in the specialised role and have only three and four caps each, respectively.

Gregor Townsend is concerned he may lose Fagerson for the World Cup.

There was better news on scrum-half Ben White who went off after 30 minutes with an ankle injury sustained in a tackle by Louis Bielle-Biarrey. “He’s much more positive now,” said Townsend of White. “He got his foot trapped under him when they kicked through, he got high tackled and got his foot trapped under him. It was an area where he had an issue at the beginning of our World Cup camp but he’s been training fully now for the last six weeks and in initial testing it seems OK. He’s off to hospital just to make sure there’s nothing in the scan so fingers crossed that he’s OK, it might be that he struggles to train this week but hopefully he’ll be available for the World Cup.”

The coach felt Fagerson was a little unlucky in the incident with France hooker Pierre Bourgarit that led to his dismissal. “Of course there’s concern when someone picks up a red card,” said Townsend. “It’s a difficult one. There are rugby incidents in games where the contact area is so fiercely competitive, France are a team that like to jackal and the hooker that Zander collided with is one of the best jackalers in world rugby.

“If it’s a timing issue or a height issue, yes we have to make sure that we don’t get those head knocks, head collisions but there was no malice or foul play, it’s more from the rugby incident of mistiming on a ruck clear so we just have to hope that the judiciary see it the same as what we see.

“I’ve seen the incident again and he does adjust his feet. The one from the Wales game [in 2021] he comes in very quickly and at the time it was very understandable because someone else hadn’t gone to the ruck clearance so he knew if he didn’t come in quickly, Wyn Jones would have got the jackal. On this occasion he did adjust his feet. It wasn’t reckless, he just didn’t get underneath the French hooker’s chest area which can happen in all the 200 ruck clears there are in a game.

Scotland's Ben White suffered injury in the win.

“What I hope for Zander and for us as a team is that they see there is nothing reckless in there, nothing was out of control, it’s just a timing issue that he couldn’t get underneath the jackaler.”

Townsend said Fagerson’s mood was low after the game - “he feels like he let down the team” - but the coach was heartened by the performance which was celebrated wholeheartedly in the coaches’ box at full-time. “We showed much more of who we are in that second half, both in attack and defence,” said the coach. “To do it with one less player for the majority of the second half is going to be really positive for the players’ level of belief.”