Varsity Cup, new point scoring trialls a success?

There is an old saying ”why fix it, if it isn’t broken?”. Indeed why re-invent the wheel?

In November of 2011 the FNB Varsity Cup, the premier rugby tournament for South African universities announced that they will be trialling a new point scoring system for the 2012 season, with a try remaining 5 points, a conversion 3 points and a drop goal and penalty 2 points respectively.

Perhaps it is not so much the re-invention of the wheel, but Rugby Union like any other professional sport has to evolve and keep up with modern day society who demand bang for their buck, and are always looking for the next best entertainment value for their hard earned cash.

The intention was to find a way where tries would become the main objective of team as a way to score points. The idea is to ensure that the entertainment value of try scoring would become the focus.

The varsity Cup has reached the halfway mark, 16 matches have been completed and the results have been interesting.

During the sixteen matches:

103 tries have been scored for a point tally of 515.
72 conversions have been successful for a point tally of 216.
24 penalties have been successfully taken for a point tally of only 48.

That means of a total of 779 points, penalty kicks contributed only 6% of total points scored.

Whether teams dominated or were dominated, they rarely used penalty kicks as a method to gain points simply because point scoring opportunities are too few and far between to justify 4 kicks at goal rather than maximising the opportunity to score a converted try.

Only one team decided to protect their lead with penalty goals and it cost them the match when they conceded a try in the dying minutes of the match.

One match has been won by a penalty goal thus far.

With the score tied at 21-21, UCT tried to run a penalty out of their own half and were penalised for an infringement which cost them the match when a penalty kick at goal was converted.

It is early days yet, the statistics will still have to be compiled at the end of the tournament to assess the true impact of the new point scoring system.
There were some fears that teams would commit more infringements at the break downs to slow down ball. The common opinion was that teams would rather concede penalties worth only 2 points, rather than a converted try of 8 points.

Early indications however show that with only 6% of points scored via penalty goals during the first 16 Varsity Cup matches, the focus has very successfully shifted toward try scoring as the primary method to win a game.

It does seem the entertainment value has been amplified and hopefully the end result may just be the answer to the evolution of Rugby Union, rather than re-inventing the wheel.

Link for Varsity cup match reports, don't know if we should add this link to the article.

http://www.supersport.com/rugby/varsity-cup/results

comparitive statistics to add

2011 - 28 matches

114 penalty goals = 4.07 penalties per match

3 drop goals

166 tries = 5.92 tries per match.

2012 - 16 matches

24 penalty goals = 1.5 per match

103 tries = 6.4 per match

Incidently the goal kicking percentage for 2011 was 72%