Why Scotland's Grant Gilchrist was red carded - and how it could have been downgraded to yellow

Scotland’s Grant Gilchrist was sent off after just seven minutes of the Six Nations defeat in Paris with a red card for France following shortly afterwards.

With Scotland already trailing 7-0 after an early Roman Ntamak try and conversion, Gilchrist flew into a high challenge on Anthony Jelonch, his shoulder making contact with the head of the French flanker, and after referee Nika Amashukeli consulted the TMO a red card followed leaving the visitors firmly up against it.

France were 12-0 ahead by the time numbers were evened up when Mohamed Haouas flew into a head-first challenge on Ben White and again a TMO review resulted in a red card being shown.

According to former French international Benjamin Kayser, on pundit duties for ITV, both challenges were worthy of the punishment but he explained how Gilchrist could have tackled differently to earn just a yellow.

Scotland's lock Grant Gilchrist is red carded by Georgian referee Nika Amashukeli during the Six Nations match in Paris. (Photo by ANNE-CHRISTINE POUJOULAT/AFP via Getty Images)

"Grant Gilchrist just gets a little bit over excited,” he said. “It’s the right arm that’s tucked in that unfortunately doesn’t allow the sanction to go from red card to yellow card. He might have been okay to go to a yellow (if he wrapped his arm around the opponent). But it’s still too high. We do not want to see any contacts to the head of players. Those sanctions are there to protect the players and we’re happy to see Anthony Jelonch back on the pitch.”

Scotland went 19-0 down before two tries from Huw Jones, and one from Finn Russell, brought them back into the match at just four points behind but a last minute try from Gael Fickou put the seal on a 32-21 win for France.