Ex-England fly-half claims referee was hosts ‘man of the match’ as Gregor Townsend addresses ‘interesting call’ against ‘raging’ Scotland
Tommy Freeman's controversial try for England and Scotland head coach Gregor Townsend.
Former England fly-half Andy Goode felt that Steve Borthwick’s side got the rub of the green during their Six Nations victory over Scotland on Saturday.
The Red Rose secured their second triumph of this year’s championship as they edged the contest 16-15, despite losing the try count three to one.
Their only try came in the opening 10 minutes, through Tommy Freeman, but that itself was a contentious call as some questioned whether it was grounded.
Scottish fans were also frustrated by the breakdown interpretations and Goode claimed that England were fortunate.
Goode’s outspoken comments
“England’s man of the match was the ref Pierre Brousset!” he wrote on X, formerly Twitter.
Goode also took to social media during the match to state that Scotland would be “raging” with how the Six Nations clash was officiated.
He added: “Never has a Frenchman been this kind to the English! If you’re Scottish you’re raging with how this game is being refereed!”
Scotland head coach Gregor Townsend was duly asked about his thoughts on some of the key decisions in his post-match press conference.
Townsend generally remained coy despite revealing his frustration for the infringement which led to Fin Smith’s key long-range three-pointer.
“I’m going to go through the game two or three times to see whether we could have got better decisions,” he told reporters.
“I did feel that the decision that counted against us for the winning three points, where we cleared someone out of the ruck, I just don’t know how that’s a penalty.
“We’ve moved someone off the ruck and they’re two feet off the ground and there was no moving legs above the horizontal. That was an interesting call for us to end up going six points behind.”
On Freeman’s try, the head coach said: “I didn’t really look at it, I heard the [other] coaches say it wasn’t grounded, but I was onto the next thing which was a kick-off.”
Good refereeing performance
Despite potentially being frustrated with a couple of decisions, Townsend stated afterwards that the referee “did well” and contributed to the match being an exciting contest.
“I thought the referee did well. It was a very good game to watch, which would mean that the referee’s had a big part to play in that. Sometimes you’re going to get those decisions and sometimes you’re not,” he said.
“We look at ourselves first of all and how we could have got more penalties out of England when we had a maul going forward when we got on the 22. And also how we could have scored one, two, three more tries, which would have been a huge achievement coming down here. But that’s what we probably should be looking to do with the chances we had.”
