Gregor Townsend believes more work needs to be done on the smart mouthguard technology after losing a second key player in as many weeks.
Zander Fagerson was forced off for a head injury assessment (HIA) early on after an alert to his ‘smart’ mouthguard.
The mouthguard sends an alert to the pitchside doctor, who then removes the player and they go through the HIA processs.
Fagerson, who looked puzzled as he came off in the seventh minute, returned 10 minutes later, but his replacement Elliot Millar-Mills endured a difficult cameo, conceding two penalties during his stint on the pitch.
In describing the incident as a “normal” tackle, Townsend added: “I think we have to really watch what we’re doing here.
“What we’ve been doing over the last few years is making sure that any symptoms that are seen, a number of people can flag up whether someone goes off for an HIA.
“Zander was taken off for 10 minutes after what looked like a normal tackle but there was a spike alert from the mouthguard.
"We’ve got to watch that because you don’t want to be taking off our best players off the field for 10 minutes if there are no issues around concussion.
“We want to protect our players, that’s for certain, but there’s a bit more work to do before this technology is correct.”
Townsend, who also lost hooker George Turner for a period in the defeat to France for a similar issue, hopes lessons are learned.
“It’s a new thing in the Six Nations and it’s not been used at club level prior to the Six Nations. I’d hope they’d learn from today’s incident and obviously George Turner went off for 10 minutes in the previous game.
“[We need] to make sure it’s as close to accurate as possible. that ‘s what we want.
“We have lots of eyes watching and players are now very good at saying ‘I’ve had a head injury here I have to go off’.
“I think we just need to do a bit more work here before we move on.”
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