England vs Wales, stats
Warm-up matches moved to the Northern Hemisphere with the match at Twickenham between England and Wales when Wales – again – fielded an understrength side and suffered the biggest hiding Wales has ever got from England.
The scrums in this match were not great. The television commentators proclaimed the referee the best in the world at managing scrums. If he is the best in the world, then presumably things that went wrong were not his fault. In any case scrumming must be the responsibility of the players as referees do not scrum.
There were ten scrums in the first half on Saturday. Only one had a natural ending. There were six resets, nine collapses, four penalties and a free kick. That is not exciting! The second half was better.
The referee used the foiur-word series of engagement commands instead of the three-word one which the IRB promulgates. The referee’s words were distinct – crouch – touch – pause – engage, where the IRB suggested crouch – touch-pause – engage.
Soudsure are again a great help with the statistics.
Sanctionary Cards
There were two – one for Aled Brew and one for Alun-Wyn Jones – the first for a dangerous tackle, the second for an infringement in the red zone that was considered deliberate. That means that Tom Shanklin and Ceri Sweeney were probably lucky not to be given yellow cards.
Recipients
Aled Brew (Wales)
Alun-Wyn Jones (Wales)
Penalties conceded
In this section we record the times a team was penalised.
England vs Wales
England were not penalised once in the second half.
Total number of penalties conceded:
England: 5
Wales: 14
The reasons for the penalties were as follows:
* = points conceded
England:
Tackle/ruck: 2 (Sheridan, Regan)
Off-side: 1 (Easter)
Scrum: 2 (Sheridan 2)
Wales:
Tackle/ruck: 7 (Sidoli, Charvis 2, Byrne, Thomas Rhys Thomas, Cooper, Alun-Wyn Jones)
Off-side: 2 (Horsman, Shanklin)
Scrum: 2 (Horsman 2)
Discipline: 4 (Horsman & Shanklin – dangerous tackle; Brew* – High tackle; Sweeney – deliberate knock-on)
England missed a penalty kick at goal.
Tackles/Penalties
This gives the number of penalties at ruck/tackle as a fraction of the total number of penalties:
England vs Wales: 9/19 = 47%
Getting possession – line-outs, scrums, free-kicks, drop-outs, turn-overs
In this section the figures represent the number of times you get to play with the ball.
England vs Wales
England:
Line-outs: 16 (1 free kick)
Scrums: 10 (3 reset, 4 collapses 1 penalty)
Free-kicks: 3 (2 scrums, 1 line-out)
Drop-outs: 1
Wales:
Line-outs: 12 (4 lost, 1 quick)
Scrums: 8 (4 reset, 3 penalties, 2 free kicks)
Free-kicks: 0
Drop-outs: 1
Stoppages (total of line-outs, scrums with resets, free kicks, penalties, drop-outs):
England vs Wales: 76
Tackles/rucks/mauls per match:
England vs Wales: 175
Kicks per match
England vs Wales: 33
England: 21
Wales: 12
Advantage
Here we give the number of times in the match the referee allowed advantage. (The figure in brackets is the number times the advantage actually accrued.)
England vs Wales: 10 (1)
Hold-ups for injury:
England vs Wales: 9
Substitutions/replacements:
England vs Wales: 10
Tries
This is the number of tries each team scored.
England vs Wales:
England: 9
Wales: 1
Tries/penalties scored
This gives the ratio of tries scored to penalties scored by each team:
England: 9/1
Wales: 1/0
The ratio of tries scored to penalties goaled: 10/1