Edinburgh Rugby officials are set to raise the issue of the performance of Irish referee Gary Conway during their 14-13 Guinness PRO12 loss to Connacht on Friday.
Players and coaches were furious with the decision-making of Conway, who had taken charge of just one PRO12 game before the start of the season, and especially his interpretations at the scrum, where Edinburgh were penalised often.
It is understood that Tappe Henning, the former international referee from South Africa who now heads the Scottish Rugby Union's referees' department, will be asked to view footage of a number of Conway's decisions before a report is submitted to league organisers this week.
"We will sit down and go through every one of those scrums with a fine- tooth comb and we will discuss it with Tappe," said Edinburgh coach Alan Solomons. "We have to get to the bottom of it. That was a killer for us."
Solomons agreed that many of Edinburgh's problems were of their own making, but insisted the scrum had been critical in such a close contest. "The scrum made an enormous difference," he said. "I felt we were too passive as a team and too flat, but there's no doubt that what happened at scrum time had a big bearing on the match."
To compound Edinburgh grievances, hooker and captain Ross Ford revealed he had difficulty trying to establish what Conway wanted at the set-piece due to the official's reluctance to discuss the issue during the game. "I tried [to talk to Conway] but he wasn't very co-operative," Ford said. "It felt as if he wasn't even listening. He didn't seem as if he wanted to listen and that affects our scrum."
Asked for his own opinion on why his side had been penalised so heavily, Ford seemed mystified. "You tell me," he replied. "Because I've no idea."
The result was a huge setback for Edinburgh after they had begun the season with an away victory over Munster and Ford admitted complacency was probably a factor. "We were shocking," he said. There is disbelief that we performed like that, it is totally unacceptable and everyone knows that. We did exactly what we didn't want to do. We dropped our performance. It was our worst display for a long time."
Alasdair Reid
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