Jamie Bhatti says he can’t understand why the head high challenge by South African centre Jesse Kriel on Scotland No 8 Jack Dempsey in the first minute of last night’s opening weekend World Cup clash in Marseilles was not reviewed by Ben Whitehouse, the television match official.

The moment passed without comment from the match officials, but subsequent replays indicated that it was exactly the sort of head-on-head contact which has resulted in several red cards in recent months, since World Rugby adopted a zero-tolerance policy towards reckless play which can result in brain injury.

“I saw it, and, in my opinion, it should have been reviewed,” said loose-head prop Bhatti, who played the final 25 minutes of the match as a replacement for Pierre Schoeman.

“Look at the red-card that happened here on Saturday night [when England flanker Tom Curry was sent off for a similar collision with Argentinean full-back Juan Cruz Mallia]. “I know it didn’t change that game as it turned out, but you need to be consistent with calls like that.

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“That’s the main thing. You can’t red card someone for the same thing on Saturday night then this one doesn’t even get looked at.

“In my opinion, you have to be consistent. Jack [Dempsey] is not happy. You can imagine what he’s like in the changing room. That could have changed the game. It didn’t change the England game on Saturday night, but you never know what could have happened. 

“You would have that one-man advantage and it could change the game completely.”

Meanwhile, Scotland captain Jamie Ritchie backed his team to bounce back from the loss.

“I'm really proud of how we fronted up physically but our accuracy at times just wasn't there,” he reflected. “Full credit to South Africa, they put us under a lot of pressure,m and we didn't execute well enough It's all things we can control, like a missed call in the line-out off the top of my head. These are things that are in our control and easy to fix.

“As a group, we still feel we've got a lot to play for in this group. It's obviously three massive games now where we can't afford to slip up so the pressure is on us to perform. 

“Like I said to the guys afterwards, although we've put a lot of work into this game and it's a bit of a setback in terms of the results, the good work we've done over the last couple of months hasn't disappeared, it hasn't gone away. 
“So, if we get back to our process, we'll be looking to hit the ground running in a couple of weeks' time.

”Scotland now have a two-week break before their next match against Tonga in Nice on 25th September.

“It gives guys some time to spend some time with their families who have made the journey out, a little bit of time to switch off and get away from rugby, so in that way, it's probably a little bit of a blessing,” said Ritchie. 
“It also means that when we come back together in a couple of days' time, boys should be a bit better recovered and ready to hit the ground running with our training and our review and preview into our next game. 

Ritchie was reluctant to use the hot and humid conditions in Marseilles as an excuse for the team failing to click as the sort of attacking force they were during their World Cup warm-up schedule.

“I'm not sure if that played a part or not, probably a little bit,” he said. “It is pretty hot but I feel like we prepared well in terms of how to cope with that with how we approached our training in the summer. 

“We spent time a lot of time out here in France getting used to the heat and we played France in Saint-Etienne in similar conditions a few weeks ago and showed up really well in terms of our fitness. It is tough but it's the same for all the teams.”