Greetings. After the first two rounds of the 2025 Rugby Africa Cup, the last two teams still within reach of making the 2027 Rugby World Cup are pre-tournament favourites, Namibia and Zimbabwe. Namibia will be looking for a tenth overall Africa Cup and an eight consecutive trip to the RWC while Zimbabwe seek a third overall African title and a third trip to the RWC.
The hosts on the other hand will be playing for the right to stay in the top tier, if last year's tournament guidelines are to be followed. The tournament has served up plenty of exciting action and for our line of work plenty of data to ponder. For this feature, we are looking at certain aspects of scrum performance.
Overall Team Performance in the Scrum
One of our objectives at this tournament is to gauge what data can be collected for future Rugby Premiership games that do not have video coverage available. Therefore, we chose to expand the performance stats we look at with an eye on what can be adopted for future use in the absence of cameras. For a while now clubs have been recording the overall team performance at a scrum; i.e., which team has possession at the start of the scrum, which team wins the scrum, and whether a scrum penalty is awarded. This was captured for 10 of the 13 playoff games this year, including 3 that were not televised.
From the first two game days, there have been a total of 130 scrum feeds with the feeding team winning 111; a winning percentage of 85.38%. Kenya have been the best performers, winning 100% of their own scrums. They have also conceded the fewest scrum penalties (01) whereas Algeria have won the most scrum penalties (08).
Individual Scrummaging Performance
An extension of this data looks at individual scrum performance. A scrum's stability and success hinges greatly on the work of the front row players. At the individual level we have looked at each front row player's involvement in the scrum and whether the team won that scrum. We also look at the penalties conceded and won while that front row player was participating in the scrum.
This first output considers only players that started the first two games in the prop position. In total only 11 props met the criteria. Uganda, Kenya and Zimbabwe were the only teams to start the same props for their respective first two games of the Rugby Africa Cup. Senegal's Wilfrid Hounkpatin, who started the quarterfinal round as a prop but was the starting eighth-man for the 5th place semifinal playoff, is omitted.
On Own Feeds - where the prop's team has possession and feeds into the tunnel - Wilhite Mususi (Kenya), Ephraim Oduor (Kenya), Victor Mupunga (Zimbabwe) and CLeopas Kundiona (Zimbabwe) have won 100% of their team's scrums. These four are the only props in this selection to not have conceded a scrum penalty as part of the feeding team. Mususi has been involved in the most scrums on offence (17), one more than Oduor. Both players have won the most scrum penalties (03), tied with Elias Coulibally (Cote d'Ivoire).
On defence, teams find it difficult to win scrums when their opponent is feeding the ball into the tunnel. 18 of the 19 times a defending team has won a scrum it has been through a free kick or penalty infringement by the attacking team. The only non-penalty win that involved a scrum steal still had an Advantage waved for the defending team that would have resulted into a scrum penalty if the team had not scored a try. Namibia's Aranos Coetzee has won 25% of his Opponents' scrum feeds, the highest rate at the Rugby Africa Cup. He has also won the most penalties on opponents' feeds (03).
Who is The Best Scrummager?
Proceeding to combine the performance statistics for both offence and defence, we can compare the scrum win rate of the selected players. Tiede Kone (Cote d'Ivoire) has the highest win rate for scrums involved in (both as the feeding team and the defending team), winning 60%. He is followed by A. Coetzee (Namibia, 58.3%) and Cleopas Kundiona (Zimbabwe, 53.57%). The top 3 are all tight-head props, leaving Elias Coulibaly (Cote d'Ivoire) as the best performing loose-head prop.
#NumbersGame Nugget
- The first 5 scrums in the Namibia vs Senegal quarterfinal game were all Senegal feeds, with Senegal only managing to win 2 (40%). Namibia won 3 penalties on those first 5 scrums, the best return for a defending team in a game at RAC2025. Namibia's first scrum feed came in the 18th minute, within Senegal territory. The first pass off the scrum feed resulted in a knock-on by Danco Burger resulting in a scrum feed for Senegal.
Ceteris. Paribus.
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