Calling all rugby nerds....

damselnat

Hey guys, was wondering if anyone could help here, I'm looking for good sites or places to find old match reports or stats on results. Basically I'm doing a final year research project on the effect of increasing the points-value of a try on the number of actual tries scored, so I need to get figures of the number of tries scored in the years prior to and post 1971 and 1992.

With a bit of hunting around online I can come up with some results, but it's awkward and time consuming, and I was hoping someone on here might have an idea of where to go to find the information I'm looking for, literally just the number of tries scored in as many competitions as existed at the time as I can, Five Nations, Courage League, world cup (and any other cross-hemisphere international fixtures) etc. I'm prepared to go digging, but within reason! (One suggestion I received from a friend was "watch all the late 80s/early 90s matches and count" - an enjoyable idea, but not very feasible!)

Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

Sheep Shagger

The BBC and IRB have decent archives on their websites so could be a starting point.

Easypeasy
http://stats.espnscrum.com/statsguru/rugby/stats/index.html

Enjoy

WeeBushy

Deleted User wrote: »

Easypeasy
http://stats.espnscrum.com/statsguru/rugby/stats/index.html

Enjoy

Plans for this evening got cancelled but after finding that site it doesn't really matter - I can see myself spending a lot of time on there!

delta_bravo

Just looking at the players names of the early Irish teams is hilarious. I googled a few and this is the best one I found


Dolway Walkington


Although captaining Ireland twice, he is more often remembered for his poor eyesight and the fact that he occasionally wore a monocle while playing, removing it when required to make a tackle.

Walkington was described as "one of the best fullbacks produced by Ireland before the turn of the century", but only in bright conditions. His poor eyesight hindered him as the light failed when "his delicate sight tells terribly against him".

durkadurka

It was then that he found his true calling as a referee

damselnat

Thanks for the suggestions guys, the IRB site was naturally the first place i looked, and they do have a great archive of results and that, as does scrum.com but what I really need is not just the final match score but a break up of the score (ie, how many tries were scored in each match). I'll keep digging!

espn site that I linked has trys per game!

damselnat

Deleted User wrote: »

espn site that I linked has trys per game!

Really, what do I search cause I couldn't find it anywhere?? That would be really great if I could get that, thanks

durkadurka

Funnily enough on the subject of the ops project, I seem to remember the try count going down for a while after the points went to 5.

I think there was an attitude of preventing tries at all costs.

damselnat

Ah, I think I've figured it! Cheers!

Snickers Man

Do these help? I do this sort of nonsense all the time

I think these show quite graphically the trends in both try scoring and points scoring since the war in the only annual multi-team international tournament there has been since that time. But they throw up as many questions as answers.

Sorry I haven't worked out how to embed an image uploaded from my PC. So they are there as attachments. If you can work out how to embed them for everybody's benefit, please do so.

cython

Snickers Man wrote: »

Sorry I haven't worked out how to embed an image uploaded from my PC. So they are there as attachments. If you can work out how to embed them for everybody's benefit, please do so.

Just take the address of the picture, and put an after it:

Podge_irl

I trust the massive spike in tries and points coincides with Italy joining? Interesting how it's steadily been declining since.

Snickers Man

Actually no. Tries spiked in 1997 and then plateaued to about 2005 when they started to tail off to the long-term trend line.

My take on that is that the late 90s saw a two-tier competition in which France and England, and even Scotland on one occasion, were so much stronger than Wales and Ireland. Those two Celtic cousins copped a lot of hidings from the big boys in those years.

Certainly, in the early 2000s, Italy were on the receiving end of a few thrashings from several people, not least Ireland, but have reigned them in a bit since, notwithstanding their hammering by England this year.

But I think the point is well made that you get a lot of tries when you get a lot of mismatches. What is undisputable is that the number of points per match started to go up steadily from the mid 1960s onwards. This has nothing to do with try values. It has to do with the fact that kicking technique and ball technology was improving steadily.

I have long thought that if you want to increase the validity of scoring tries, just make the ball heavier. A lead weight in the middle would lessen the likelihood of some kicking machine like Ollie Campbell or Johnny Wilkinson kicking you to death from the half way line.

A similar approach was taken to reducing the flight of a javelin in athletics, when it became clear that it was getting close to the stage where a competitive throw might skewer an athlete on the track.

Podge_irl

Snickers Man wrote: »

Actually no. Tries spiked in 1997 and then plateaued to about 2005 when they started to tail off to the long-term trend line.

Indeed. Turns out I can't read a very simple graph.

damselnat

Hey guys, this is all great stuff, thanks. Hoping to look at the effect of the bonus points system as well, as I'm covering a period of about 50 years just for the points-value change (1961 - 2001/2), so think I'll have plenty of data on my hands to analyse!