England have only themselves to blame

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As for the final scrums when England were chasing a penalty, the scrum was one area of ​​the game that never really got going – I think only one of them was finished. All the others were either penalties, free-kicks or resets.

This made it very difficult for referee Ben O’Keeffe, and everyone really, to tell which side was dominating the scrum, as the referee was unable to get a sense of which side was leading. . The referee was unable to modify the behavior of the players to achieve good results during the scrum. It’s not his fault, as long as he did everything to change the behavior of the players, if that’s the case, it comes down to the top ranks.

Meaning that when you reached those final scrums, which had to be completed even though the clock had gone to red, as a referee you didn’t have a clear picture in your mind of who was stronger in the melee. They continued to go down on the engagement, apart from the penultimate scrum which went around in circles.

Initially I thought it might be a penalty for England, but looking at it it wasn’t a net penalty anyway. A reset was a completely understandable move for him given the context of the game. You have to be 100% sure. In this position I would have given a reset as well, given that it looks like both packs rotated it.

England’s choice to shoot into the corner towards the end will be in question, just like in the 2015 Rugby World Cup against Wales. History almost repeated itself. You’re damned if you, damned if you don’t in this situation. But it’s completely understandable that they opted for this decision over the draw.

An interesting moment was when Joe Marler kicked the lineout and gave a free kick for not being five yards out, while Cowan-Dickie was off the field. This led to a penalty from which Scotland took the lead. People might have wondered why Jamie George wasn’t brought in for the lineout, but if you have a doomed front row player, you can’t take a player out until the next scrum, because throwing at the alignment is not considered a specialist position.

England, to bring in George, would have had to make a tactical substitution, which would have meant the released player could not return to the field, except for a player undergoing head injury assessment or blood replacement.

Other than the penalty try, there were few major talking points for the officials. It was a really nice and exciting Calcutta Cup game.

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