Spot the Difference? Contact Event Frequency During > 30,000 Women's and Men's Rugby Union Player Matches Across Top Domestic and International Competitions.

ABSTRACT: This study aimed to quantify the frequency of individual and team contact events during rugby union match play in top domestic and international men's and women's competitions. Analyst-coded player individual and team contact event types (tackles, carries, attacking rucks and defensive rucks, lineouts, scrums and mauls) from the 2022/2023 rugby union season were analysed from top domestic and international competitions across the world using generalised linear mixed models. For both women's and men's rugby, competitions generally had similar numbers of contact events per playing position. Where differences were observed, most ranged between 0.5 and six per contact event per full game equivalent (FGE). Similar trends were observed when comparing women's to men's rugby. However, within-game

SUBMITTER: Roe G 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12009008 | biostudies-literature | 2025 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature