Scotland believe they have informed officialdom of Welsh misdemeanours that can help them set up a roadblock on their visitors’ route to the Grand Slam today.
As well as leading the Six Nations Championship table with three wins in their three matches to date, the Welsh also have the best disciplinary record, whereas Scotland’s is the worst.
However, the home side’s defence coach claimed yesterday that they have identified areas that raise cause for concern and could make a telling difference.
“We’ve had a good chat with the referee. There are a few things around the game where we’re confident we might get results in terms of penalties. Hopefully that comes to fruition,” said Matt Taylor.
Unusually, the man in charge, Frenchman Pascal Gauzerre, was also the referee when these sides met last year, when there was little in it in terms of infringements with Scotland conceding eight, just one more than the Welsh that day.
However in terms of the score that mattered, the home side cruised to a 34-7 win that day and it is the Scots whose behaviour has been more of a problem in the interim, the disciplinary table mirroring the main one, with Scotland and Italy at its foot, having conceded 29 apiece whereas Wales and Ireland, who may well be playing off for the title next weekend, are joint top having given away just 19 each.
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Naturally, Taylor would not go outline the detail of what had been discussed with M. Gauzerre, since to do so would negate whatever advantage may have been gained from flagging things up. It would, however, be a major achievement if the Scottish management have been able to persuade him to take what would amount to a substantially different view of the teams’ approaches as compared with the way matches have been refereed to this point.
“I won’t go into it because it’ll give the opposition an idea of how we’re thinking, but we’ve seen one or two things which will hopefully give us an advantage,” Taylor elaborated.
“You can’t rely on those conversations you have with referees, all you can do is highlight areas of concern and hopefully you get the benefit. Or sometimes what happens during a game is that a team might have been doing something in the lead-up but then it gets highlighted.
“We’ve had the same where we’ve had to say to the team ‘listen, you need to be really good in this area’ or ‘you can’t creep offside’. Then in the game they don’t do what they’ve done before because what the referee doesn’t want to do is penalise them for things they’ve warned you about.”
Perhaps the best chance of the ploy having any meaningful impact could be if it places some doubt in Welsh ranks ahead of the match since, as Taylor noted, they are likely to get an inkling of what has been targeted in those discussions during their pre-match briefing with the referee.
“They want to give you warning before the game because they don’t want to catch you by surprise, but if they keep doing what they’ve been doing then you hope you get something out of it,” he said.
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