Published in the Irish Examiner, Saturday Feb 9th 2013

If an acquaintance should propose a friendly wager on the number of ties or kicks in the Six Nations this weekend, it’s worth noting that the opening weekend of the 2013 Six Nations was an outlier.

Since 2009 the average Six Nations weekend has supplied ten tries. Last weekend provided 16 tries, joint most since 2009. In contrast the least number of tries scored on any Six Nations weekend was a meagre four, scored on the final weekend of last year’s championship. The 16 tries is unlikely to be repeated, with this weekend’s try total most likely to be in the 10-12 range.

Last weekend’s kicking was also notable, but in a different way. The 14 penalty goals attempted were the lowest since 2009 by some distance. The average number in a Six Nations weekend in that time was 22 attempts, with the next lowest the 17 attempts in the opening weekend of the 2011 championship.

Overall, the kicking itself was excellent. Fully 13 of the 14 penalty attempts were landed (93%) with 12 of the 16 tries successfully converted. Overall that made for a place-kick success rate of 83.3%, the best for a weekend since 2009. The worst kicking performance in that time was the 58.8% recorded on the 2009 opening weekend.

What does the above mean? It’s just four years of games, but based on this recent history there will likely be fewer tries and more penalty attempts this weekend. So if that acquaintance should offer that friendly wager on a simple “higher/lower” bet on the number of tries or kicks this weekend, a rugby fan should use the numbers above to make sure they’re on the right side of that deal.