As we wait in anticipation of the World Cup final, the rugby world grows restless. The comedown of semi-final spectacle quickly turns to final speculation, but when it comes to World Cup finals, numbers and history often matter little – we only need to look back to 2019.
Then, an English side coming off a dominant semi final performance against the All Blacks already held a transitive victory over the Springboks from their pool stage matchup. England, the deserving favourites, found that this title offered them little once the first whistle was blown, as the 43 points they had conceded through the whole tournament to that point mattered little once South Africa had put 32 on them.
Nevertheless, in the anticipatory excitement this week it is a good time to look back on the 8 strangest stats and facts of the World Cup, which reveal some of the more unusual aspects of this tournament.
Interestingly, four of these were Fiji’s pool matches and two were quarterfinals.
22 metre entries are a consistent indicator of results. The team that dominates this stat very frequently wins the match. Yet, the outliers are the matches of most interest. In all of Fiji’s pool matches, the team who had fewer entries won. Wales had seven fewer entries than Fiji and were victorious by six, Fiji then had three fewer than Australia but won by seven.
The then shaky performance against Georgia saw Fiji have one less 22m entry but still scrape a win, and then a seemingly more composed performance against Portugal saw them have two more but lose to Os Lobos. This topsy turvy pool stage will likely never be repeated. When Fiji seemed to dominate a game, it was not enough to win but could steal the matches when they weren’t at their attacking best.
Interestingly, two matches of prominence fall in this statistical minority as well: the quarter finals of New Zealand vs Ireland and France vs South Africa. The northern hemisphere teams must have been left scratching their heads as their attacks seemed so potent, until they were in the zones to score!
Further spotlighting the Irish misfortune in this quarter final, Ireland had an opportunity to win the match and attacked for an impressive 37 phases to try and keep their campaign alive. In these 37 phases, they threw 87 passes trying to stretch the New Zealand defence. To highlight how unique every rugby team is in their approach, when Romania played Ireland in the pool stage, Romania threw only 48 passes in the 80 minutes. Who knows how long it would have taken the Oaks to reach the figure Ireland did in five minutes.
To illustrate the need to be clinical, not just be in the right area of the field, Tonga and Portugal’s performance against tier one nations highlight different scoring outputs. Tonga kicked two early penalties against Ireland without getting within 30 metres of the Irish try line. They capitalised off the only opportunity they got to venture near the try line. Spending six minutes in Ireland’s 22 in their only visit, Tonga had a lineout and three scrums while five metres out from the line, before finally scoring their sole try of the match.
Portugal against Australia in comparison, were left to rue their aim to score tries, as simply kicking a drop goal every time they entered the 22 would have proved more fruitful. The 39 points drop goals would have been enough to overcome Australia’s 34 that day. Instead, Australia got out of jail with 11 turnovers in their own 22 that day as the score line failed to capture what the match looked like outside of Australia’s 22.
The imbalanced nature of the draw was well known, however, just how tough it could get was not immediately obvious. South Africa as the 1st ranked side in the world had to play Ireland (3rd) and Scotland (6th) in the pool stages, then knock out France (4th) and England (5th) in the quarter and semi. This leaves only New Zealand (now 2nd) in their way. In contrast to England’s semi final run, the rankings of teams they played were 7th, 12th, 23rd, 15th and 10th before meeting South Africa.
A much discussed stat from the weekend was that England fought so valiantly, despite not breaking the South African line once. This was an impressive effort but perhaps indicated that England’s attacking potency was being maximised in their kicking approach. The previous lowest figure at the World Cup for comparison was Romania recording just one line break against Scotland. They lost 84-0.
England were the most anomalous team of the World Cup, with many of their statistical categories being either overwhelming or totally deficient. Their discipline was no different – they were the only team to not receive a yellow card in the course of the tournament. However, Tom Curry did receive a red card only three minutes into their opening game, making it the longest any team spent in a match with only 14 players.
While many of England’s statistical categories do not paint a pretty picture, one that does was their defence. England did not concede a try in the first 20 minutes of any match. What makes this so impressive was that early tries seemed to be so many teams’ method to control and win matches.
This early defence meant that even though England scored very few early tries, they were able to still create pressure and control matches for long periods of time. To contrast this, New Zealand epitomised scoring early tries, scoring 11 in the first 20 minutes of matches throughout the tournament.
A testament to New Zealand’s rugby superiority is their reach through teams besides the All Blacks. In this tournament, New Zealand born players have dominated for a variety of teams. Despite being only 1 of 20 nations participating at the World Cup they make up more than 25% of the man of the match performances. The 13 players to receive the awards are by nation:
As the tournament concludes this weekend, one team will earn the title of champions for the next four years. Yet, it’s enjoyable to look back on the more unusual moments of the tournament, those that might not be as memorable as thrilling quarter finals or historic upsets.
Let me know any of your favourite stats or facts that I have missed in the comments.
Brendan NH Fan
Roar Rookie
Its a good stat. Not sure how relevant it is to a persons performance today. Take Faf as an example, he played in SR for about 4 years and out of it for 6 years. He played 103 games for Sale, 54 for SA 54, SR 65 and CC 59. Can CC claim that they made him the man he is or does Sale take the honour as over half his games he has played was when he was a Sale Employee. Aki has played 175 games for IRFU related teams over 9 years, he played 68 for NZR teams over 4 years some of which are semi-pro games. He worked in a bank until he was 22 and came to Ireland at 24. JGP has 156 games for IRFU teams and 83 for NZR or which 32 were semi pro. He left a back up club player in NZ and Leinster turned him into a test player. He had been in Ireland 4 years before he was pick even though he could have played after 3 because he was not ready. How many man of the match performances from Craven week in SA, maybe an SA schools competition might have more than NPC so would that make it better or just the pathways people follow. URC have had more Man of the Match perfomances than SR so what do we get from that.
K.F.T.D.
Roar Rookie
Have you seen ‘Rain Man’.
Favourable Matchups
Roar Rookie
Awesome! I did some calculations and across the tournament the biggest ranking risers were: Portugal- 4.17, England- 3.77, New Zealand- 2.5 which as your suggests illustrate it really is a couple of individual games that create the changes. Biggest fallers were interestingly: Samoa with -3.96, Fiji with -3.9 and Georgia with -3.55. It is particularly interesting that the nature of the system means that despite Fiji's recent strong play because they only won 2/5 with an upset loss they fell so far.
Favourable Matchups
Roar Rookie
A good question, a particularly crazy way to illustrate the English approach Sunday was that there 11-15 had: 8 tackles, 7 passes, 6 turnovers lost, 5 kicks from hand!
Wal
Roar Guru
Yeah, found this site, its a bit hard to read but fascinating the impact matches can have on rankings. It is such a weird system, particularly capping the exchange to 4 or 6 pts. Biggest Pts exchanges in single matches were Port Fiji Port gained 4 pts Eng Arg Eng gained 3.27 pts NZ Ire NZ gained 3.22 pts
Favourable Matchups
Roar Rookie
A different metric though a very interesting one! Would be very interested in the matches where the victor had the greatest ranking points discrepancy. Portugal would clearly be greatest winner from this, but curious who else overcame the rankings.
Wal
Roar Guru
Fair enough, the other way to look at it is the ranking points difference before the start of each match. NZ v Ire 87.69 v 93.79 -6.1 NZ v Arg 90.91 v 83.07 +7.84 SA v Fra 89.79 v 90.59 -0.8 SA v Eng 92.48 v 84.03 +8.44 So using the ranking points in theory the matchups, the AB's had should have been in tougher matches.
Favourable Matchups
Roar Rookie
I would argue its actually a better representation of opponent strength right now. Would confuse me to give Argentina credit when the main match that flipped the rankings was Argentina against 14-man England who were up 24 points with 5 mins to play and didn't have to score a try to do so.
Peta Smith
Roar Rookie
Hope you didn’t read point 8 Brendan…you know, the one where 28% of PotM awards came from NPC developed players?!?!
Wal
Roar Guru
Using the recent rankings is very misleading as RWC matches carry double points. Using rankings before the RWC NZ had semis and Qtrs vs higher ranked teams. Fra (3) Nam (21) Ita (13) Urg (17) Ire (1) Arg (6) SA have had. Scot (5) (Rom (19) Ire (1) Tong (15) Fra (3) Eng (8)
Decoy
Roar Rookie
Cheers for a very interesting read, great angle. The England stats are mind boggling. I read somewhere that one of their midfielders only got a touch of the ball in the second half against the Boks. If that’s true, it must be a record of some sort. I mean really, how does that happen?
Pete Samu's Tucked Shirt
Roar Rookie
Will be interesting who the Boks start at Flyhalf. Or will Pollard simply play the entire game for his kicking nonce and distribution to bigger outside backs. This selection will tell us how the Boks are to play
Bliksem
Roar Rookie
They can, but why would you if you have that quality in the forwards? They play to their strengths. If they encounter a slow forward pack that will dominate upfront, they will surely keep the ball in play for longer.
Brendan NH Fan
Roar Rookie
I do wonder if people believe that SA can't play the faster game. I think they can but generally play it safe. I think the wingers could do some damage if it becomes an open game.
Bliksem
Roar Rookie
If NZ do that then the Boks should definitely play a 7-1 bench. The Boks like a physical contest and will want to use the 1st phases incl scrums and mauls to drain NZ energy. They will kick out for touch prepared to sacrifice distance (unless it is from penalties) and use a fast defensive line to minimise New Zealand’s space. The All Blacks will have a counter for the problems they experienced to get the ball in space in the previous match. I think the Boks’ shown their cards to early just like the All Blacks did in their opening pool game in 2019.
Brendan NH Fan
Roar Rookie
But surely after all the talk NZ can't do that. I would expect NZ to look to play the ball as quick as they can be that lineouts that are kicked to far for an SA chaser.
Brendan NH Fan
Roar Rookie
Good stats
Bliksem
Roar Rookie
The idea to play the All Blacks prior to the RWC and play your best side don’t look that wise today. The Boks may have gained a psychological advantage, however it came at a cost. Teams also figured out, especially after the Ireland game, that they can negate the Boks bench by slowing the game down with pre-scrum “injuries” and line-out conferences. However the Boks may still have to play a 7-1 bench to negate the impact of fatigue without gaining any strategic advantage.
Pete Samu's Tucked Shirt
Roar Rookie
Point 4. is important. I’ve said this before, that statistically NZ have had an easily run to the RWC Final, having France first up, followed by several tier 2 matches, then Ireland. (Argentina had the potential to test them but didnt). Boks have certainly done things to the tougher way and have been tested in a lot more of their matches! Are the ABs fresher overall with their cricket score-training runs? Or will the Boks being substantially more battled hardened prevail? I’m hoping for a good match!