A furious Hamish Watson has branded the call to send off Scotland prop Zander Fagerson "rubbish" and "not rugby" following the defeat by Wales.
For the second week running, Wales had to dig deep to beat 14 men, with Peter O'Mahony and Fagerson both receiving red cards for illegal shots to the head in consecutive weeks.
While most accepted the decision was the right call, disgruntled Scotland flanker Watson has not minced his words about the decision.
“That was a rubbish call," he said.
"An absolutely dreadful call. That's not rugby, that call.
“Zander is absolutely fine. We've already got round him. He's a great player and a big part of everything we do with Scotland.
“He can hold his head high, I think. We lost that game in the last 10 minutes of the first half and the first 10 of the second. We lost that game when we had 15 on the field. Zander has nothing to worry about.
“I haven't heard the comms from the TV but I've heard from other people that the TMO said it wasn't a red, then the ref has overruled him. The ref has the right to do that if he thinks that's the right call, but we as players strongly disagree with that call.
“As soon as I saw it on the TV, I was thinking: 'That's not even a penalty'. It is what it is. The ref has overruled it and that's his decision, he has the power to do that. There's not much else we can say. We don't think it's a red, a yellow or even a penalty. But that's the way the game is going.”
UPDATE: Watson has now issued a public apology for these comments.
As well as dismissing the decision to send off Fagerson for his no-arms clearout to the head of Wyn Jones, Watson also claimed that Wales didn't "win" the match at Murrayfield, rather Scotland lost it.
He added that the next match against France would be significantly more challenging than the test posed by Wayne Pivac's side.
“It was indiscipline that cost us,” he said. “Wales didn’t win it. We had that game in our hands and we chucked it away.
“France away is going to be 10 times harder than the game on Saturday,” he said. “We know we’re a good enough team to go to France and beat them, though.
“We haven’t done that there for a while so we want to get that monkey off our backs.
“Saturday doesn’t change how good a team we are. It was a slip-up of our own doing and we will go to France full of confidence because we know how good a team we are.”
