The whole country is aware of it: history will be made tomorrow morning (NZ time) when either New Zealand or South Africa becomes the first four-time winner of the Rugby World Cup.
Planet Rugby – in a match preview – describes the All Blacks and Springboks as two wonderful teams, which have shown skill, physicality, bravery and resilience to reach the cup final.
The All Blacks and the Springboks are the most successful countries in rugby’s history, lifting the Webb Ellis Cup on three occasions each, but one of those nations will be out on its own on Saturday night.
In this country, The Facts has posted these statistics to enable us to compare and contrast the two teams –
KEY INSIGHTS
- Of the 23-player teams named for the Rugby World Cup (RWC) final:
- 8 All Blacks have a win rate of 80% or better (Brodie Retallick, Sam Cane, Aaron Smith, Beauden Barrett, Tamaiti Williams, Sam Whitelock, Finlay Christie, Damian McKenzie).
- 1 Springbok has a win rate of 80% or better (Jean Kleyn). He’s only played 5 games but has won all 5. (Emoni Narawa has also won 5/5 but came home early with an injury).
- 22/23 All Blacks have a winning percentage over 70%. Mark Talea has won 5/8 games (63%) with the ABs.
- 5/23 Springboks, 2 starting players and 3 reserves, have a winning % over 70%.
- Overall, the ABs team has an average win rate of 77%. The Springboks 66%.
- Both teams are hugely experienced:
- All Blacks = 1,396 caps. 61 on average. 4 centurions (Sam Whitelock 152, Aaron Smith 124, Beauden Barrett 123, Brodie Retallick 108)
- Springboks = 1,286 caps. 56 on average. 1 centurion (Eben Etzebeth 117).
- Despite the caps being similar (AB’s wth 8.6% more), the ABs have scored twice the number of tries and total points:
- All Blacks = 328 tries (16 each on average). 2,812 points (134 each on average).
- Springboks = 144 tries (7 each on average). 1,455 points (69 each on average).
All Black’s wider RWC squad
- Dane Coles (90) = 81%
- Fletcher Newell (13) = 77%
- Ofa Tu’ungafasi (59) = 78%
- Tupou Vaa’i (25) = 68%
- Luke Jacobson (18) = 83%
- Ethan Blackadder (10) = 80%
- Cam Roigard (5) = 80%
- David Havili (29) = 69%
- Caleb Clarke (20) = 75%
- Leicester Fainga’anuku (7) = 71%
- Emoni Narawa (5) = 100%
Other notes:
- All publicly available data has been published.
- We decided to put the starting teams in the graphics, and the All Blacks wider RWC squad in the notes.
- We listed the names in the graphics based on their jersey numbers from 1 to 23. Similarly, we listed the wider All Black squad members from the front row to the back three.
- We would like to list all All Blacks winning percentages over time, but there is no easy way to do this. We have asked Rugby Database to help. From what we can see, from All Blacks who have played a reasonable number of games, Buck Shelford comes out on top with a remarkable 96% win rate (46/48). In the modern era, Sonny Bill Williams had a 90% win rate (52/58), Conrad Smith 89% (84/94), Richie McCaw 88% (131/149), Dan Carter 88% (98 or 99/112). There’ll be several we’ve missed, so we look forward to adding this once we have the full data.
- Additional details and notes can be found in the data source pages below.
- All numbers are provisional and subject to revision.
Thank you to the Rugby Database, and the Factors who helped pull this together.
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SOURCE:
On Homepaddock, Ele Ludemann has added:
Both teams have won the Rugby World Cup three times.
The All Blacks are the only team to have had consecutive wins (in 2011 and 2015).
Dare we hope they will win tomorrow morning, stop the Springboks winning consecutive tournaments and being the first to win four?
Point of Order 