2022 Six Nations - Men's

Introduction

The 2022 Six Nations Championship ended in one of the most exciting Saturdays. The final day produced a Grand Slam winner (France), a Triple Crown winner (Ireland) and a last-minute victory by Italy which ended a 36-match losing streak in the Six Nations.  

It also brought an end to a tournament that was dominated by two teams – France and Ireland.

The immediate impact of this was seen in the 520ccc.com Men’s Rankings powered by Capgemini.  The tournament began with England ranked third, Ireland fourth and France fifth. By its conclusion, this had changed as  England had dropped to fifth, France had moved up to third while Ireland remained in fourth.

At the other end of the table, Italy again finished in sixth position. They did, however, end their run of 36 consecutive defeats by beating Wales – and  produced positive elements in their play. They nevertheless conceded almost 40 per cent of all tries and because of this, in evaluating the try-scoring performances of the other five teams in this commentary section, their matches against Italy have been excluded.

Scoring Margins

In the 2021 Six Nations, one of the major factors that contributed to the positive reaction by rugby followers was the closeness of many of the matches and the tightness of winning margins.

When Italy’s results were isolated, eight of the remaining 10 matches had margins of just five points or fewer. This was not repeated in 2022, however, where the corresponding number was down to three. This is shown in the following table:

MATCH	MARGIN  in  2021	MARGIN  in 2022	Difference
England v Scotland	5	3	-2
Wales v Ireland	5	22	+17
Scotland v Wales	1	3	+2
Ireland v France	2	6	+4
France v Wales	2	4	+2
France v Scotland	2	19	+17
Scotland v Ireland	3	21	+18
England v France	3	12	+9

 What this table indicates is the domination of matches by France and Ireland. In addition to having the two most effective defences, their ability to score tries was overwhelmingly greater than the other teams.

In their four matches, France and Ireland scored a try every five minutes of possession. England, by contrast, required more than 23 minutes of possession to score a try. These rates are shown below:

		TRY SCORING RATES
	FRA	1  try every 5 minutes
	IRE	1  try every 5 minutes
	SCO	1  try every 13 minutes
	WAL	1  try every 16 minutes
	ENG	1  try every 23 minutes

 In the four matches that the above five teams played each other :

• Ireland scored 15 – or 3.3 tries per game
• France scored 12 – or three tries per game
• Wales scored five – just over one per game
• Scotland scored five – just over one per game and
• England scored three tries – less that one try a game.

Source of Tries

What also characterised both France and Ireland was their ability to score from all sources of possession and all parts of the pitch.

Ireland scored 15 tries from lineout possession, turnovers, opponents’ kicks and tap penalties. They scored from possession gained within their own half as well as within five metres of their opposition goal-line.

France scored their 12 tries from lineout possession, scrum possession, turnovers and opponents’ kicks. They scored tries from all over the field, including from inside their own 22. Not one of France’s tries were mauled or driven over the goal-line.

By contrast, all three England tries came from lineouts, one of which was a five-metre overthrow by their opponents. Not one try came from a scrum, a turnover, a tap penalty or an opponents’ kick.

All of Wales’ tries came from near their opponents’ goal-line. Three of Wales’ five tries came from five-metre lineout drives; one came from a nine-metre tap penalty and one from  17-metre interception.

By contrast, none of Scotland’s tries came from near their opponents’ goal-line. Scotland’s five tries all started from possession gained between 30-65m from their opponents’ goal-line.

There was a time when the percentage of tries scored from lineout possession and the percentage of tries scored from scrum possession were very similar with each accounting for some 20 per cent of all tries.

Over the years this ratio has shown a dramatic change. In the 2021 Six Nations,  for example, the lineout try percentage was up to 49 per cent and the scrum percentage down to 15 per cent. It moved again this year to 47 per cent from lineout possession and 11 per cent from scrum possession.

This 11 per cent, however, included one untypical match where all 12 scrums were uncontested and produced three tries. When this match is excluded, the number of tries scored from scrum possession becomes five or eight per cent.

This is likely to be a consequence of the scrum no longer being seen as a source of possession but more as a source of penalties.

The result was that:

• one in 30 scrums produced a try, while
• one in three scrums resulted in a penalty

 This percentage varied between the teams:

• When England participated in scrums, almost 60 per cent ended in a penalty
• In Wales’ case it was half as frequent at just under 30 per cent

Try Scorers

Overall, 70 per cent of tries were scored by backs. The table below shows that of the six teams, five saw their backs score more tries than their forwards. England were the only exception.

The table also illustrates the difficulty that England’s backs had in scoring tries. In five matches England’s backs scored four tries compared to the 29 scored by those of France and Ireland.

		TOTAL TRIES	BACKS	FORWARDS	PENALTY TRY
	IRE	24	17	7
	FRA	17	12	5
	SCO	11	8	2	1
	WAL	8	5	3
	ITA	5	5	0
	ENG	8	4	4
	TOT	73	51	21	1

 

Tries and Penalty Goals

Another illustration of the scoring contrasts between the teams can be seen in the differing ratios of tries scored to penalty goals kicked. While Ireland scored six times more tries than penalty goals, England scored twice as many penalty goals as tries.

		TRIES SCORED	PEN GOALS KICKED	RATIO TRY TO PEN GOAL
	IRE	24	4	6 to 1
	SCO	11	7	1.6 to 1
	FRA	17	12	1.4 to 1
	WAL	8	7	1.1 to1
	ITA	5	9	0.6 to 1
	ENG	8	17	0.5 to 1

 

France and Ireland

Despite France and Ireland having similar results and scoring profiles, there were some noticeable differences in their approaches to the game:

• Ireland made 192 passes, France made half as many (98)
• France, however, made more pass offloads than Ireland
• Ireland had more possession than their opponents in all five of their matches
• By contrast, France had less possession in four of their five matches and won all five
• Ireland made 50 per cent more rucks than France
• Ireland’s ruck speed was 40 per cent faster at defensive rucks than France
• Ireland made 40 per cent more mauls than France
• Ireland’s fly-half kicked three times as often as the French fly-half, while France’s centres kicked twice as often as Ireland’s
• Ireland kicks from hand were likely to be twice as contested as France’s kicks

General Play Kicking

 The average number of kicks out of hand during a game was 55. The most in a game was 74, the fewest 36.

The average number of kicks per team per match during the tournament was therefore 27,  and all team’s averages hovered closely around this figure,  the lowest being 25 and the highest 32.

An exercise was then undertaken which broke down each team’s kicks into four different categories. The data is shown in the following table.

			CONTESTED KICKS	UNCONTESTED KICKS	KICKS TO  TOUCH	OTHER KICKS
	ENG		44%	26%	14%	16%
	IRE		33%	28%	19%	20%
	ITA		31%	33%	20%	16%
	WAL		23%	47%	16%	14%
	FRA		16%	54%	16%	14%
	SCO		15%	55%	15%	15%
	TOT		27%	40%	17%	16%

 There were some similarities between the teams - around one in six of all teams’ kicks were kicks to touch and another one in six comprised the other kicks category.

There were, however, some major differences between the teams in the remaining categories.

England’s opponents were put under far more pressure than other teams’ opponents. Almost every other kick would be contested by England while France’s and Scotland’s opponents would be challenged on only one occasion in six. One of the reasons for undertaking the exercise was to see if the kicking options taken by the teams were reflected in the results of matches. On this occasion, a correlation between the two did not become apparent.  

 

 

Full reports - Northern and Southern hemisphere championships

Below you can download full reports for the major championships played in the northern and southern hemispheres, provided by the 520ccc.com Game Analysis department.