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Can you comeback in 6 Nations matches?


Watching yesterdays Ireland vs Scotland game as Ireland built a first half lead I couldn't help but think that I'd struggle to name many Six nations matches which the half time leaders did not go on to win.
Rather embarrassingly I realised that I'd seen the biggest comeback in the Six Nations the previous week as France surrendered a 16-0 lead against Wales. However by that point I was already ferreting through some scorelines.....

So how often are there comebacks in the 6 Nations?

Answer: In 292 matches in the Six Nations era there have only been 46 comebacks from a half time deficit to win.



Put another way 81% of the time the team winning at half time go on to win

 This graph rather neatly shows how common it is for teams to be winning at half time and go on to win. Home teams who have achieved this are in the top right quadrant, away teams in the bottom left, the away teams who have comeback are in the top left and home sides are bottom right.




 The 2011 championship was the high point for comebacks with 5, however for 3 years between 2002 and 2005 there were no second half comebacks at all.

Margins for comebacks


As you would expect the size of the half time deficits does affect the chances of a comeback. If you can stay within six points at half time you have a decent chance, but the value of leading by a converted try does seem to have a significant impact; leads of less than six points have been overturned 30% of the time, but leads of 7 of more just 6%.




This demonstrates the outstanding Welsh comeback in Paris last week, as its one of only 4 come backs in the 6 nations era from a decifit of 10 points or more. The question is can you name the others (answers at the bottom).

But who are the comeback Kings? And who cant be trusted to finish the job?



Answer: Wales have staged the most comebacks (12) after being behind at half time, followed by England on 9. France and Scotland are next with 8 each.
On the flip side the stereotype of the mercurial French would appear to have a few grains of truth in it with Les Bleus having been the victim of 11 second half comebacks closely followed by Scotland and Italy with 10 each.

Of course this is possibly a bit unfair on France - how often have Italy led at half time in comparison?

So looking at the rate of second half comebacks - its actually England top of the pack with a comeback rate of 23% compared with Italy's rate of just 5%.


TeamComebacksComeback Rate
England923.08%
France821.05%
Wales1220.69%
Ireland514.71%
Scotland812.12%
Italy45.06%

England also lead the way for closing out a game when they lead at half time only having lost on 4 occasions, Italy once again are bottom of the table losing after leading at half time 40% of the time.


TeamLeads LostLoss Rate
England46.35%
Wales68.70%
Italy510.00%
France1115.94%
Scotland1026.32%
Ireland1040.00%

Taking this a bit further leads to an interesting little fact:

There is only one Six Nations fixture pairing that hasn't seen a second half comeback to win: Ireland and England, the reverse of this is the Scotland and Italy games see a second half comeback once every three matches on average.


Conclusion


So in short, second half comebacks are really difficult to execute in the six nations and the value of a 7 point lead is not to be under estimated.

And those 10 (and above) point comebacks in the Championship since 2000?
England (17) 17-18 (6) France 2005
England (16) 19-26 (6) Wales 2008
Italy (13) 20 - 21 (3) Scotland 2014
France (16) 19-24 (0) Wales 2019

In other words half of the half time leads England have frittered away to end up losing are 10 points or more!

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