Statistics - first two quarter-finals
There were two quarter-finals on the Saturday – Australia vs England in Marseilles and France vs New Zealand in Cardiff. We give some statistics from these two thrillers.
One of the stories the statistics tell is what a mess the Australian scrum was – yet again. Australia put the ball into ten scrums. There were 10 resets, 13 collapses, 2 free kicks and 2 penalties. Apart from that their scrum was regularly destroyed. The first scrum of the match lasted nearly four minutes from award to its end and then its end was a penalty. No wonder there was some upset about scrums in Stade Velodrome in Marseilles.
In the first half England did not put the ball into a single scrum.
England were penalised only once in the second half, and that near the end, a distant penalty which Stirling Mortlock missed.
Mortlock and Jonny Wilkinson each missed three kicks at goal, an unusually high number.
Twelve drop-outs in the match is also an exceptionally large number.
In Cardiff, France were not penalised once in the second half and only twice in the whole of the match, the lowest number of penalties against a team at the 2007 Rugby World Cup.
Sanctionary Cards
There was just one yellow card in these two matches – against Luke McAlister for blocking Yannick Jauzion’s path to the ball near the New Zealand goal-line, an action which the referee described as cynical.
Penalties conceded
In this section we record the times a team was penalised.
* = points conceded
(i) Australia vs England
Total number of penalties conceded: 15
Australia: 10
England: 5
The reasons for the penalties were as follows:
Australia:
Tackle/ruck: 1 (Gregan)
Off-side: 3 (Barnes*, Moore, Elsom*)
Scrum: 2 (Dunning* 2)
Discipline: 4 (Vickerman – man without ball; Sharpe – collapsing maul; Ashley-Cooper – air tackle; Vickerman – man without ball)
England:
Tackle/ruck: 4 (Shaw, Easter*, Sackey, Worsley)
Scrum: 1 (Sheridan)
Each side missed three penalty kicks at goal.
(ii) France vs New Zealand
Total number of penalties: 10
France: 2
New Zealand: 8
France were not penalised in the second half.
The reasons for the penalties were as follows:
France:
Tackle/ruck: 1 (Pelous*)
Off-side: 1 (Dusautoir*)
New Zealand:
Tackle/Ruck: 3 (McCaw 2, Collins )
Off-side: 3 (Robinson, Collins, Williams*)
Discipline: 2 (Muliaina – high tackle; McAlister – obstruction)
France missed two penalty kicks at goal.
Tackles/Penalties
This gives the number of penalties at ruck/tackle as a fraction of the total number of penalties:
Australia vs England: 15/15 = 33%
France vs New Zealand: 4/10 = 40%
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.
(i) Australia vs England
Australia:
Line-outs: 15 (2 lost)
Scrums: 10 (10 reset, 13 collapses, 2 free kicks, 2 penalties)
Free-kicks: 2 (scrums)
Drop-outs: 5
England:
Line-outs: 11 (1 lost, 1 quick)
Scrums: 4 (1 collapse, 1 penalty)
Free-kicks: 0
Drop-outs: 7
(ii) France vs New Zealand
France:
Line-outs: 10 (4 lost, 1 quick, 1 skew)
Scrums: 10 (2 reset, 2 collapses, 1 free kick, 1 wheel)
Free-kicks: 1 (scrum)
Drop-outs: 2
New Zealand:
Line-outs: 5 (1 quick)
Scrums: 5 (3 reset, 4 collapses)
Free-kicks: 0
Drop-outs: 2
Stoppages (total of line-outs, scrums with resets, free kicks, penalties, drop-outs):
Australia vs England: 71
France vs New Zealand: 50
Tries
This is the number of tries each team scored.
(i) Australia vs England:
Australia: 1
England: 0
(ii) France vs New Zealand:
France: 2
New Zealand: 2
Tries/penalties scored
This gives the ratio of tries scored to penalties scored by each team:
Australia: 1/1
England: 0/5
France: 2/2
New Zealand: 2/2
The ratio of tries scored to penalties goaled is 5/10
