Scotland reaction: Red card 'massive mitigating circumstances', rating for display and 'game to be won' claim

Gregor Townsend felt there were “massive mitigating circumstances” as Scott Cummings became the first Scotland player to be punished with a 20-minute red card.

The lock forward was initially shown a yellow early on in the 32-15 defeat by South Africa at Murrayfield but it was upgraded following a review in the so-called ‘bunker’ by Tual Trainini, the French foul play review official.

Scotland were able to replace Cummings with Max Williamson under the terms of the law variation which is being trialled in the Autumn Nations Series. The rule allows red-carded players to be replaced after 20 minutes by another player rather than condemn teams to playing out matches a man short if the offence is deemed non-deliberate.

Scott Cummings reacts as he is sent to the sin bin. | AFP via Getty Images

Confusion surrounded the Cummings incident. It looked at first as if Rory Darge was the player being punished but then it transpired it was Cummings who was deemed guilty of a dangerous clearout on his opposite number, Franco Mostert.

“At the time, I thought he’d got the wrong person,” admitted Townsend. “I thought Rory Darge had come across his side and then there was another angle where Scott’s movement did land on the leg of the player who was jackling. But there was massive mitigating circumstances. Scott was there to clear a contact and the scrum-half popped up as he was clearing contact, which took Scott off his feet and he did land on the jackling player’s leg.

“But it’s such a dynamic game and you're hitting those contacts at huge speed that I thought it was a very harsh red.”

South Africa outscored Scotland by four tries to nil, with Makazole Mapimpi bagging two and Thomas du Toit and Jasper Wiese getting one each. The hosts enjoyed a period of dominance midway through the second half but were unable to find a way through against the Springboks who defended superbly. The Scots’ points came from five Finn Russell penalties and they had a Ben White try chalked off in the first half following a knock on by Huw Jones in the build-up

“I thought it was one of our best performances the last few seasons,” said Townsend. “To go up against the world champions, you’ve got to bring your own physicality, match their physicality.

“You’ve got to work as hard as you’ve ever worked and I felt our players did that. When you consider that we were down a man for 20 minutes and that player being a second row, she only talked about how well they managed that 20 minutes but also it takes a huge effort to get through that. And the effort was there in the second half.

“When the game was opening up, we looked at times the fitter team. So yeah, there’s a huge amount of pride. Not just pride, but pleasing aspects to the performance.”

A general view as the LED screen displays the message "Bunker, Review Outcome, 20 Minute Red Card" | Getty Images

Sione Tuipulotu also expressed pride in the performance but the Scotland captain felt his side needed to be more clinical.

“We put ourselves in positions to score tries,” said the centre. “I thought the last bit of execution really let us down today, especially in the finish zone, close to the line at least.

“We were down there for a big part of that second half and we didn’t walk away with tries that we should have walked away with. So yeah, we’ve got to take responsibility for that. The game was there to be won and we didn’t execute.”