The Opta Rugby Data Debrief: Autumn Nations Series Round One

The Autumn Nations Series kicked off at the weekend, with England hosting the All Blacks and Scotland taking on Fiji.

The Autumn Nations Series eased into life on Saturday, with just two fixtures to cast an eye over as England and Scotland hosted New Zealand and Fiji respectively. The series will see a full schedule of fixtures take place over the next three weekends, but the opening round certainly gave us a taster of the quality of rugby we can expect throughout the month of November.

England vs New Zealand

It was a blockbuster affair for the opening match of the 2024 Autumn Nations Series, with New Zealand facing England at the newly-named Allianz Stadium in Twickenham.

The All Blacks claimed victory but the match went right down to the wire with England having opportunities to win late on.

New Zealand held the lead going into half-time, but shortly after the break England edged in front thanks to a try from Immanuel Feyi-Waboso. He has now scored a try in each of his last four Tests, including three in three against the All Blacks.

A penalty from Marcus Smith with 20 minutes remaining saw England move into an eight point lead before Smith and his halfback partner Ben Spencer were subbed off in the 63rd minute.

That change seemed to spark an All Blacks resurgence as they scored 10 unanswered points to claim victory in the final quarter of the match – a similar theme to their two-match series in July this year, with England ultimately losing the series 2-0 despite holding the lead at the 60 minute mark in each game.

With Spencer and Smith on the park, England moved the ball beyond the first receiver on 25% of their attacking phases and played with at least 10 metres width on 43% of phases. Once the pair came off, those numbers dropped to 11% and 27% respectively, perhaps a sign of a more conservative approach to see the game out rather than continue with the gameplan that had served them well until that point.

It is worth noting that New Zealand played with less width in that same period, although they did have much higher rates to begin with, before dropping to a level that was similar to England’s numbers before their tactical changes.

However, England still had chances to win and in a match with such fine margins, the efforts of the goal-kickers come into greater scrutiny. There was just one missed kick in the match and it was certainly no gimme, with George Ford’s late penalty having the hardest difficulty of any of the kicks that England attempted against the All Blacks, with just a 71% expected success rate. In fact, England scored as many points from kicks as Opta’s xGK model suggested they would, so it would be hard to pin the blame on England’s performance off the tee.

If anything, the All Blacks should be praised for their efforts in front of goal, with their kicks having an average expected success rate of 58%, including two efforts from the right touchline that had xGK values below 50%.

New Zealand got their Autumn Nations Series off to the perfect start ahead of a clash with the world number one side Ireland on Friday night in Dublin.

England, meanwhile, will need to dust themselves off before welcoming the Wallabies on Saturday. Steve Borthwick will be hoping his men are well out of sight come the final 20 minutes…

Scotland vs Fiji

After a tense affair at Twickenham, the crowd at Murrayfield were treated to a slightly less stressful 80 minutes, with Scotland getting fans’ pulses rising through their silky attacking play rather than any nail-biting drama.

Much of Scotland’s good work was done in the opening and closing 30 minutes of the match, scoring four unanswered tries in both periods of the game. Fiji, meanwhile, enjoyed good 10-minute spells either side of half-time, during which they slashed the deficit from 29 points to 12 and might have started to believe they could mount one of the great comebacks.

Ultimately, though, Scotland had too much quality for Fiji in both attack and defence. Although they conceded three tries, Scotland’s defence in open play was more than a match for a Fiji team who are used to beating defenders with ease. The Scottish defence registered a 94% tackle success rate during the match, an impressive tally given how rare it is for even the top teams to manage that against the Flying Fijians.

In fact, Fiji have faced a Tier 1 nation on 31 occasions since the 2011 Rugby World Cup and only twice have their opponents recorded a tackle success rate of 90% or better, with Scotland responsible for both instances (also 94% in November 2022).

Scotland were equally efficient in attack, making almost twice as many 22 entries as Fiji (14-8) and averaging almost twice as many points per entry (4.1), as well as gaining over twice as many metres from fewer carries (Scotland – 643m from 126 carries, Fiji – 321m from 141).

For Scotland’s wingers the match became a tussle to see who could finish as Scotland men’s all time top try scorer, with Darcy Graham crossing the line four times to go level with his Edinburgh teammate Duhan van der Merwe on 28 Test tries, before the latter edged back in front with a late try of his own.

Both had fine outings and will need to be at the top of their game when they face arguably the most ferocious defence in world rugby next Sunday, as the World Cup and Rugby Championship-winning Springboks roll into town.

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