England world rugby's best passers, IRB stats show

12.45pm

The International Rugby Board's statistical analysis of 2003 comes to some surprising conclusions.

The comprehensive report, published by the Planetrugby.com website, reveals that 2003 was a veritable try-fest, that England are the world's greatest passers and that the French enjoy kicking the ball.

And, for all you doubters out there, all referees perform the same -- regardless of their origins.

The analysed matches comprise all those games played between the world's 10 leading sides -- the Six-Nations countries, the Tri-Nations countries, and Argentina.

The World Cup warm-up matches played in August and September by Six Nations countries have been excluded.

Obviously, some of the cricket scores notched up during the group stages of the rugby World Cup may have skewed the figures.

The average number of points scored per game in 2003 was 47, a figure equal to 2002.

This was made up by 4.8 tries per game, 5.1 penalties and 0.6 dropped-goals.

The findings point to an explosion in try-scoring -- the average number of touchdowns in both 2001 and 2002 was a paltry 1.75 per game.

The set-piece remains the best platform from which to launch a try, with 47 per cent of all 152 tries coming from a team's own feed into the lineout or scrum.

But a word of warning to all those first five-eighths with shaky touch-finding abilities -- 32 per cent of all tries came following an opponent's kick.

Here are some of the stats:

Possession source leading to try (by number of tries)

Lineout (own) - 50

Scrum (own) - 22

Opponent's kick - 21

Penalty/free-kick - 18

Opponent's handling error - 14

Turnover - 13

Lineout (opposition) - 6

Opponent's restart - 5

Own restart - 2

Scrum (opponents) - 1

Build-up to tries

With the tight defensive lines employed in modern rugby, there is a widely held belief that it's almost impossible to score a try directly from first-phase possession.

Planetrugby said: "Don't believe it -- 67 per cent of all 152 tries scored in 2003 came directly off set-piece situations."

1st phase tries - 44

2nd - 36

3rd - 25

4th - 17

5th - 9

6th - 8

7th - 5

9th - 8

Passes

Another revelation is that a player does not even need to know how to pass to score. Most tries stemmed from no passing whatsoever -- a statistic that says something about the role of the spilt ball, but is heavily skewed by tries coming from pushovers, rolling mauls and lineouts.

Total number of passes that precede tries:

None - 20

1 - 15

2 - 19

3 - 19

4 - 13

5 - 18

6 - 11

7 - 6

8 - 6

9 - 8

10 to 19 - 17

Games, on average, contained 268 passes (up by 10 a game from 2002). And, regardless of England's alleged reliance on the boot of Jonny Wilkinson, the world champions are the team who enjoy tossing the ball about the most.

Average passes per game:

England - 162

New Zealand - 149

Italy - 144

France - 142

Australia - 138

Wales - 133

Scotland - 129

Ireland - 118

South Africa - 113

Argentina - 79

Kicking

The findings support the widely held belief that the Tri-Nations teams would prefer to run the ball than kick it in open play.

Ireland -- despite the presence of the fleet-feet of Brian O'Driscoll -- are the hoofers of the world game, opting to kick an average of 37 balls per game.

Predictably, the rarest kick in world rugby is one off an All Black. The findings won't please the French who pride themselves on their running rugby -- they were guilty of putting boot to ball 29 times per game.

Average number of kicks per game:

Ireland - 37

Argentina - 31

France - 29

Wales - 27

Scotland - 27

Italy - 26

England - 26

Australia - 26

South Africa - 25

New Zealand - 24

Average number per game: 55

- NZPA