The Opta Rugby Data Debrief: Red Roses Run Riot, Speedy Scores, and Second-Half Surges

In the Northern Hemisphere, the 2024-25 rugby season is in full flight, with the Premiership Women’s Rugby joining the party this weekend to add to a packed three days of club and international action.

Whether you’re a connoisseur of international rugby and tuned in for the second round of this year’s WXV, or you prefer the bread and butter of the domestic leagues, there was something for everyone over the weekend.

The experts at OptaJonny have cast an eye over the data to pick out some of the key talking points from around globe.

Quick Starts

Catch the kick-off, carry into contact, set up the ruck and exit with a kick to touch; that’s often the template for the opening exchanges of a game. Unfortunately, the Ospreys fell at the first hurdle against Munster on Saturday evening, spilling the kick and allowing the Irish province to pick up the scraps and dive over the line for the quickest try in United Rugby Championship history.

Clocked at 10 seconds, it was the earliest a try has been scored in the history of the competition, with Shay McCarthy’s try being the fifth to be scored in the opening 30 seconds of a match since South African teams joined the competition in 2021-22.

Interestingly, the quickest try in the URC era had come just a week before, when Macs Page scored for Scarlets against Cardiff after just 15 seconds.

There was a similar story in the Premiership Women’s Rugby, with Bristol Bears – and in particular, Reneeqa Bonner – getting off to a rapid start in their opening league game against Loughborough Lightning.

The Bristol winger scored a four-minute hat-trick, with the third of those tries coming just eight minutes into the game. Since Opta began recording the PWR (since 2022) it’s both the quickest hat-trick – in terms of time between the first and third tries – and the earliest a hat-trick has been registered in a match.

In fact, since analysing the competition, no team had previously managed to score three tries inside the opening 10 minutes of a match, highlighting just how quickly Bonner and the Bears got out of the blocks.

Déjà vu

We’re one year out from the Women’s Rugby World Cup and England have comfortably dispatched the Black Ferns. That might be a familiar story, given it also happened in 2021, but the Red Roses certainly won’t be getting ahead of themselves.

In the autumn of 2021, England beat New Zealand twice, before France did the same over the following two weekends. However, the Black Ferns responded by embarking on a 16-game winning run that saw them lift the Rugby World Cup and beat France and England in the semi-final and final respectively.

That said, it is worrying for New Zealand that they were beaten so comfortably and have now lost three matches in a row for just the third time in their history. Only once, during a four-game run against England and France three years ago, have they lost more in succession.

England have now won 49 of their last 50 matches, but the scars of that solitary defeat against New Zealand in the World Cup final are a stark reminder that it all counts for little if you don’t win when silverware is on the line.

A Game of Two Halves

Our French data experts at OptaJean reliably inform us that this old cliché isn’t used in francophone countries, but if it was there surely would be one or two murmurs of that kind after a weekend of second-half comebacks in the TOP 14.

Six of the seven games to take place in the French top flight over the weekend were won by the side who trailed at half-time, with reigning champions Toulouse finding themselves on the end of the biggest turnaround, losing to Castres by five points after leading by nine at the interval.

Over the last 15 years of the league, no round had ever seen more than four games won by the side who were behind on the scoreboard after 40 minutes.

Over in the URC, there were no such issues for the Lions, who raced to a 48-0 first-half lead against Edinburgh. In the last 15 years, it’s the biggest half-time lead in any of the big three European leagues, while only two other teams have scored as many points in the first half of a match (RC Toulon – 49 vs Bayonne in 2017 & Racing 92 – 49 vs Agen in 2018).

Ruck Star

Finally, a shoutout to the men who do the ‘unseen’ work. Your efforts don’t go unnoticed by Opta Analyst – in particular, Afolabi Fasogban.

The young prop has turned heads already in his short career due to his immense scrummaging power, but he’s shown that all the energy expended at the set piece hasn’t affected his ability to get round the park.

At the weekend, the 20-year-old hit a mammoth 45 attacking rucks. Not only was it the most by any player in the Premiership at the weekend, it was the most by any player in a single match in the Premiership, TOP 14 or United Rugby Championship so far in 2024-25.

Gloucester eventually ended up on the losing side against Sale at the weekend, but it certainly wasn’t for a lack of effort from the players.

Enjoy this? Check out our other Rugby Union content on Opta Analyst. You can also follow our social accounts over on X, Instagram, TikTok and Facebook