VIDEO: Townsend has his say on 'very harsh red card' and 'cynical' Boks

REACTION: Scotland head coach Gregor Townsend believes his team had some “bad luck” in their 15-32 defeat to the Springboks at Murrayfield on Sunday.

One of the biggest talking points was Scott Cummings’ red card for a croc roll on Bok lock Franco Mostert.

The Scottish player was initially given a yellow card in the 11th minute for the incident, but it was upgraded to a 20-minute card.

With that red card trial in place, Scotland were back to full strength 20 minutes later as Cummings could be replaced.

Deuxième carton rouge de 20 minutes en deux matchs. Cette fois-ci, c’est Scott Cummings qui écope du nouveau carton rouge pour être retombé sur les membres inférieurs d’un gratteur en essayant de le déblayer. pic.twitter.com/5qw4otIuCA

— Gauthier Baudin (@GauthierBaudin) November 10, 2024

On that incident, Townsend said, “At the time, I thought they had the wrong person.

“I thought Rory Darge came more across the side and there was another angle where Scott’s movement did land on the leg of the player

“But there were massive mitigating circumstances.

“Scott was there to clear contact and the scrumhalf 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 is such a dynamic game and you are hitting those contacts at a huge speed.

“I thought it was a very harsh red.”

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Townsend was proud of his side’s fighting spirit, but he also believes the Springboks should’ve had another player yellow carded in the match after Makazole Mapimpi was sent to the sin bin for cynical play in the 57th minute.

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

“You’ve got to work as hard as you’ve ever worked and I felt our players did that.

“If you consider that we were down a man for 20 minutes and that man being a second row, it takes a huge effort to get through that.

“The effort was there in the second half when the game was opening up. We looked at times the fitter team and it looked like we were sharper.

“There is a huge amount of pride, but also pleasing aspects of the performance. There was some skill execution that we must improve, but I also feel we had a bit of bad luck.

“We stole a line-out in our 22 and the ball goes into their hands they score seven points.

“Then a Huw Jones knock-on chalks off a try three phases later and I don’t know if you can go back more than two phases [with a TMO review], but it was a knock-on, and you can’t get around that.

“Those are moments in the game – seven or 14 points that would’ve put us in a better position.

“They [Springboks] were giving away a lot of penalties.

“There could’ve been a second yellow card when Ben White was taken out five metres from the line, so I felt we had enough pressure and positions to score more points.”

Townsend added: “I thought we were going to get a [another] yellow card [for South Africa]. It was cynical play five metres from the tryline and even if you have already awarded a yellow card before, you have to look at the action.”

@rugby365com