Which Six Nations Team is the most successful?
As one of the most competitive and one of the Highest quality rugby tournaments globally the Six Nations is held annually and 20 years ago it actually expanded from 5 teams in the competition to six teams! It was the addition of Italy who are always impressive that brought us to the current compliment of 6 teams.
In 20 years of the Six Nations we ask “Which Six Nations Team is the most successful?” ! Who could it be?
With teams competing every year the statisticians have crunched the numbers and the results are in as you can see from the table we have compiled stats for all the games since the inception of the Six Nations tournament 20 years ago.
(Please note the source of the data for this article was Betway)
Over the course of the Six Nations competition the teams have between them scored 13123 points occurring during 400 hours of games, 1274 ties and 1500 players!
Presently all the teams have played 100 games and we have compiled a table which allows us to take a deep dive into the stats in this great visual way to make comparisons and build the case for who is the greatest team!
Lets consider some of the data and find out the answer to our question!
First though lets be clear on a few points which actually were relevant in the compiling of the table. First up, when compiling the table it was absolutely essential to make actually revisions to the data! The reason for this is in 2017 a new points system was introduced! Teams now earn four points for a win and two for a draw, and a bonus point for either scoring four or more tries or losing by seven points or fewer.
Complicated already, right! This is only the tip of the iceberg! We say this because unless a neat innovation was applied then you could have a team winning all 5 games but not winning the title! There was no option but to introduce an extra bonus award for the team that won all 5 games! So! They get 3 points for winning all 5 games! Its totally impossible for more than 1 team to win all five of their games and therefore this scoring innovation allows the team who win all five of their games to be crowned champions!
England are the most successful of all six teams in the Six Nations competition… when you consider the size of the playing population (largest in the world) and the historical and recent sporting record of the nation then well… with that level of talent its not surprising. England have actually won more matches and titles than any of the other nations and they have also score the most tries and overall points than anyone else.
England have more try bonus points, they have more losing bonus points, and they have won two grand slams!
England has also an extraordinary home record. Out of 50 matches at the home English Rugby Twickenham they have only lost 8 matches.
A truly fantastic record which really reflects the quality resources, knowledge and character of English Rugby… something we are very, very proud of!
Very, very best wishes. The Rugby Rep Six Nations Editor At Large.
