{"id":548688,"date":"2026-03-18T16:14:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-18T16:14:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/548688\/"},"modified":"2026-03-18T16:14:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-18T16:14:08","slug":"six-nations-dissected-after-best-ever-tournament","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/548688\/","title":{"rendered":"Six Nations dissected after ‘best-ever’ tournament"},"content":{"rendered":"

This week we will mostly be concerning ourselves with poring over some numbers, a burning Six Nations question and the swings and roundabouts everywhere\u2026<\/p>\n

Lies, damned lies, and other interesting bits\u2026<\/p>\n

Well, that was that. France\u2019s championship finishing with two games in which they scored 88 points and shipped 96. Shaun Edwards\u2019 smirk as he casually reminded the reporter that it was his seventh title went a long way to covering the fact that his French defence became inexplicably leaky.<\/p>\n

Steve Borthwick\u2019s intent to play by the numbers backfired notably when faced with teams who were willing to stuff the numbers and allow skill and the stuff before their eyes to get free rein. But the numbers do tell some tales.<\/p>\n

The number of yellow cards, for example, which saw England<\/a> spend almost precisely one fifth of the Six Nations<\/a> with fewer than a full team on the pitch. You can talk about kicking games and decisions until you are long in the tooth, but you won\u2019t win much when a player down so much of the time.<\/p>\n

Those ill-disciplined players ought particularly to be buying a fruit basket for Ben Earl, whose inexhaustible engine saw him top the carry charts for the entire tournament with 94, 16 ahead of anyone else over his 370 minutes of action.<\/p>\n

Action man? Well sort of, but not entirely. That accolade goes to the dozen who spent every minute of every game on the pitch, a list including Thomas Ramos, who was second in carries to Earl. The two French wings, Louis Bielle-Biarrey and Theo Attisogbe, also spent 400 minutes on the pitch, racking up 14 tries between them. That\u2019s a try every 57 minutes, no mean strike rate. But while the 400-minute club is almost exclusively populated by backs, purists might point out that perhaps the real action man is Ireland\u2019s<\/a> Caelan Doris, who played all 400 minutes at number eight, coming sixth in carries and third in tackles and was the only forward in the top six for beating defenders as well.<\/p>\n

Louis Bielle-Biarrey also conjured up a phenomenon: he managed more tries alone than anybody else managed try involvements (scores or assists), while five of the top six try involvement players were French backs. Well, if your defence is that leaky\u2026<\/p>\n

Was it though? France were second in tackle success through the tournament, a shade behind Scotland (which is ridiculous when you think about that game between the two) and they also topped the dominant tackle percentages. Weirdly, it seemed every time they missed one, it counted though; 36 per cent of the missed tackles by Shaun\u2019s warriors led to tries. And they weren\u2019t even the worst, with England punished for missed tackles 44 per cent of the time, and that on the back of the least effective tackle completion rate of all six nations at 83 per cent. Strange numbers for England indeed.<\/p>\n

Six Nations Team of the Tournament: Every nation represented after one of the greatest editions in \u2018living memory\u2019<\/a><\/p>\n

Everybody lauds Italy\u2019s scrum, and with good reason, yet England\u2019s scrum won the most of its own ball in percentage, while they snaffled a monstrous 33 per cent of opposition scrums. England also had the best lineout and were only behind Italy on opposing lineout steals. They also had the highest percentage of rucks under three seconds and the highest percentage gain-line success. Only France made more line-breaks.<\/p>\n

And here is a thing too: England\u2019s expected tries was the highest of all the teams at 5.8 per game. But they woefully underperformed it, running tries in at an actual 4.2 per game. Little wonder then, that the red zone conversion rate was only 39 per cent (Ireland and France both ran in over 50 per cent and even Wales were more efficient) while England\u2019s red zone denial stat was the only one of all six teams under 50 per cent, at 41.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a rich patchwork of numbers to put together. How did Italy, with expected tries at 5.2, manage to win three games with a tries for rate of 1.8? Perhaps it was the defence, which managed to leak only 3.2 tries per game against an expected 5.2. Has to be really, Italy\u2019s red zone conversion rate was the only one worse than England\u2019s at 28 per cent.<\/p>\n

How bad were Wales really? Well, the only stats the Welsh fared worst defensively in were tries against and goal line denials. Meanwhile in attack, they were worst in tackles evaded, line breaks and offloads. Those two early games were costly. Scotland? They had the most carries for the least gain-line success, but the best tackle success rate and the least number of missed tackles causing tries. But yeah sure, it\u2019s all about their backs\u2026<\/p>\n

And the weirdest stat? Over the tournament, France had the highest percentage of rucks slower than the magical three-second mark. The team with the highest percentage of sub-three second rucks? Stodgy old England. It\u2019s a weird game\u2026<\/p>\n

One of the best ever<\/p>\n

And for all that weirdness, surely this edition has to go down as one of the best-ever. Not a single nation avoided an intense storyline in a tournament which produced the highest-ever number of tries at 111. From Wales and Scotland\u2019s redemptions, through Italy\u2019s ending of the only undefeated record between two nations, via Ireland\u2019s resurgence, France\u2019s effervescence and the crisis that has slowly engulfed England, not one game was humdrum or less-anticipated.<\/p>\n

A lot of talk is around various towns and hubs in the world about how to get rugby more visible, more vibrant, more entertaining. Perhaps just letting several teams with decades of history slog it out annually is actually the way forward, instead of all those pesky law tweaks.<\/p>\n

Ups and downs<\/p>\n

The pressure remains upon Steve Borthwick, with a slightly more-than-coincidental number of hacks calling for Michael Cheika to take the reins before the Nations Championship starts in South Africa this July. How quickly things can change.<\/p>\n

But he\u2019s not alone. There\u2019ll be a fair bit of soul-searching in Georgia this week, after Portugal deservedly nicked their Rugby Europe Championship on Sunday with an enthralling backs-to-the-wall win. And yes, Georgia\u2019s suits might well be ruing the odd decision to axe Richard Cockerill ostensibly because of a missed kick against Japan.<\/p>\n

And spare a thought for German coach Mark Kuhlmann, whose side memorably triumphed against Romania in early February, but were relegated in ignominious fashion against Switzerland last week and then shipped 74 points to Holland this week. Rugby coaching can be a rough ride.<\/p>\n

READ MORE: State of the Nation: Ireland \u2018definitely trust again\u2019 in Andy Farrell after damaging start where \u2018the knives were out\u2019 for his \u2018jumbled-up team\u2019<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This week we will mostly be concerning ourselves with poring over some numbers, a burning Six Nations question…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":548689,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[567],"tags":[64,63,1208,1379,2592,818,1182,26779,2328,53422,44,760,5994,103300,85,12812],"class_list":["post-548688","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-rugby","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-england","tag-features","tag-france","tag-home-page","tag-internationals","tag-ireland","tag-italy","tag-loose-pass","tag-news","tag-rugby","tag-scotland","tag-six-nations","tag-sports","tag-wales"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/548688","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=548688"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/548688\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/548689"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=548688"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=548688"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=548688"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}