A KPI is worth tracking if it follows the result and points at something you can train. We took the core team numbers from thousands of matches from every variety of rugby, men’s and women’s, from amateurs to professionals, and checked each one against who won. Teams in the top quarter for tackle completion won nearly three matches in four, and teams in the bottom quarter won about one in three.
For a way to record them during a match, start with the best rugby stats apps. What a typical team scores on each:
- Tackle completion: about three tackles in four.
- Carry dominance, the share of carries where the carrier wins the contact: about nine in ten.
- Lineouts on your own throw: about three in four won.
- Scrums on your own feed: about nine in ten won, and every one in about half of matches.
- Turnovers at the breakdown: about four won and four lost a match.
- Penalties conceded: ten to a dozen a match.
- Knock-ons: seven or eight a match.
Tackle completion and carry dominance follow the result
Split teams into quarters by tackle completion and the win rate rises at every step, from about a third in the bottom quarter to nearly three in four in the top quarter. The bottom quarter completed fewer than about two tackles in three, and the top quarter more than about four in five. What a good tackle completion rate looks like goes further into that one number.
Carry dominance moves the same way. Most teams win the contact on about nine carries in ten, so the gaps between teams are narrow. The top quarter, above about nine in ten, won about two matches in three. The bottom quarter, below about six in seven, won about two in five.
Win four lineouts in five and watch for lost scrums
A typical team wins about three lineouts in four on its own throw. Teams that won at least four in five won nearly two matches in three, and teams that won fewer than three in five won about two in five. Winning every lineout, with at least four thrown, is rare: about one team in ten managed it, and those teams won about seven matches in ten.
Scrums work the other way round. In about half of matches a team wins every scrum on its own feed, so a perfect scrum is normal and the number to watch is how often it goes wrong. Teams that lost more than one scrum in five won about two matches in five, against about three in five for teams that lost none.
Penalty and knock-on counts mislead on their own
Teams that gave away at least three more penalties than their opponents won nearly two matches in three, and teams that gave away at least three fewer won about half. The scoreboard explains most of it: a team in front has less of the ball and spends more time defending, which is where most penalties come from, as our penalty study found. Knock-ons did the same, for the opposite reason. The teams with more knock-ons had more of the ball, so more chances to drop it.
The breakdown balance is cleaner. A typical team wins about four turnovers and loses about four. Teams that won more than they lost won about three matches in five, against about half for teams that lost more.
What to do with this
Pick five numbers and record them every match: tackle completion, carry dominance, lineouts and scrums on your own ball, and turnovers won and lost. Each one follows the result in our data. Set every match against your own season average and the typical values above, and start the week’s planning with the number furthest from normal.
Keep counting penalties and knock-ons, but judge them on the video. Ten penalties while defending a lead and ten while killing your own attacking ball are different problems, and the total cannot tell them apart.
How we worked this out
Based on over 4,000 fully analysed full-length matches spanning every variety of rugby, men’s and women’s, from amateurs to professionals, deduplicated so no fixture is counted twice. Every number is for the team being analysed, the side of the game our data captures most completely. Tackle completion is made tackles divided by made plus missed, with assists left out. Carry dominance is the share of carries where the carrier won the contact. Lineout and scrum figures count won and lost on the team’s own ball with resets left out, and the bands use only matches with at least four of each. Results come from the scores recorded in each match, and draws are left out of the win rates. To check each pattern is real rather than noise, we split the matches at random into two halves, and every pattern above held in both. Analysed teams are often the stronger side, so every win rate here sits a little high. A link with winning also does not prove the number causes the win.
Hero photo: zoonabar (flickr), CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
