Six Nations: Scotland’s costly yellow card offences ‘daft’, says Andy Nicol

DAFT, silly, unfortunate. BBC pundits used different adjectives to describe the yellow cards picked up by Nick de Luca and Rory Lamont yesterday, but their meaning amounted to the same thing: both backs had committed avoidable errors which had cost Scotland heavily.

For former Scotland captain Andy Nicol, daft was the word. “This is such daft play there by De Luca,” the ex-scrum-half said of the centre’s sin- binning five minutes into the second half for tackling Wales centre Jonathan Davies off the ball.

“That was a kick through. Jonathan Davies never had the ball in his hands, so why would De Luca think about tackling him?”

Nicol offered the same verdict on the yellow card which followed for Lamont. De Luca was still in the bin when the full-back also committed a professional foul, tackling James Hook from an offside position. Scotland then had to soldier on for a couple of minutes with 13 men, and played almost half the second half at a numerical disadvantage. They had gone in at half-time level at 3-3, but went on to lose 27-13.

“Both of them are absolutely dumb,” Nicol continued. “The Scottish backs have let down the Scottish forwards today, because the Scottish forwards put in a power of work and great play. To go down to 13 men against a side like Wales, you’ve no chance.”

Ex-Wales stand-off Jonathan Davies, the more illustrious namesake of the present centre, said he would not rule out committing a professional foul in any circumstances. But he said that doing so should be a matter for rational calculation, and that both Scots backs had got it wrong.

“Sometimes you have to do a professional foul,” Davies said. “You have to think ‘Is it worth it?’ and maybe you do it. Whereas those two were silly. The winger [Lee Jones] had it covered from the kick through with Jonathan Davies, and if he had just run another four or five yards, then he could have made the tackle, maybe.”

Former Wales winger Shane Williams was more charitable, restricting himself to calling the sinbinnings “unfortunate”, and sympathising with the Scottish defence with the difficulties they faced when two men down.