Wales face Scotland this weekend as they look to get their Six Nations back on track after a nightmare start against Ireland in the opening round. Warren Gatland's side were humbled by Andy Farrell's men in Cardiff, conceding three tries in the first 20 minutes of the game as they fell to a 10-34 defeat.
Much of their undoing was their shocking discipline in the first half, as they gave away eight penalties in the opening 25 minutes, conceding 15 overall. Wales will likely be much tighter at Murrayfield.
The man they need to stay on the right side of is Andrew Brace, a former player turned referee with previous Six Nations and World Cup experience, but not always the most popular with coaches, including a Welsh legend.
So who exactly is Andrew Brace and what can Wales and Scotland expect from his refereeing? We take a closer look:
Who is Andrew Brace?
The Irish referee was born and bred in Cardiff, moving between Wales and Ireland during his younger years and working across the Irish Sea as a community officer for Munster before moving into refereeing. As a result, he is assigned to the Irish Rugby Union and can therefore take charge of Wales matches despite being born here.
Remarkably, the Welsh-born Irishman also played international rugby for another nation, Belgium, who he qualified for through his father's family. He helped Belgium to victory in the 2012 Emirates Cup of Nations, while he also played for the country's sevens team before his career ended due to a string of injuries.
In 2015 he refereed the British and Irish Cup final and also made his PRO14 debut in a match between Cardiff Blues and Zebre, as well as his Challenge Cup debut, this time between Zebre and Gloucester. The following year, he oversaw matches in the Six Nations U20s Championship and the World Rugby U20 Championship.
He began refereeing Test matches in 2017 and also took charge of a World Cup qualifier between Canada and the United States. He has served at the World Cup and Six Nations as a touch judge, before taking full charge of games at the Six Nations in 2021, overseeing Scotland's historic win over England at Twickenham.
What happened to him in 2020?
Brace once admitted: "One of the best bits of advice I received was that if you’re not being talked about afterwards, you’ve had a good game," but that certainly wasn't the case back in 2020, when he oversaw a controversial England win against France in the Autumn Nations Cup final.
England battled their way to a 22-19 victory that day with Owen Farrell kicking the winning penalty in the second period of extra time to lift the cup. However, Brace and his officiating team appeared to miss a knock-on in the build-up to the Luke Cowan-Dickie try that forced the contest into extra time.
There were a couple of other big decisions that the French felt didn't go their way during the match, with head coach Fabien Galthié saying after full-time that "the game was won by decisions not actions," adding: "losing because of decisions is hard".
Assistant Shaun Edwards, formerly of Wales, was also left fuming, telling BT Sport after the match: "We'd like to have a bit of an explanation about the knock-on in the last tackle which led to a try. There was a knock-on in the lead-up. The referees can't see everything and neither can the touch judges but we were a little bit disappointed... the TMO could have interfered in that decision."
However, it didn't stop there for Brace, with the Irishman targeted with a torrent of vile abuse from unhappy French fans who issued threats.
"As well as the death threats, I had people telling me never to come back to France again," he told RugbyPass. "I had more than a thousand messages on Instagram and someone made a parody profile of me on Twitter just to abuse me.
"The first tweet they’d have seen was about my dad’s obituary. My dad went on a road trip where he’d traced his father’s footsteps from World War II. That was my pinned tweet at the top of my page and they jumped on it saying I was a s*** referee, that I’d ruined the game."
"Some of them were asking how much I’d been paid to get England over the line," he added. "One of the messages my sister got said none of my family should ever come to France again, another said they hoped I’d die of Covid. I hope your family die of Covid."
The abuse was so bad that Brace was removed from officiating a Champions Cup match between Toulouse and Exeter Chiefs a few days later, but he has since bounced back to rise above the social media trolls.
Who are the Scotland v Wales officials?
Referee: Andrew Brace (IRFU)
Assistant referees: Frank Murphy and Chris Busby (IRFU)
TMO: Brian MacNeice (IRFU)
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