Duncan Casey: What do the numbers from the opening three rounds tell us about Ireland and England’s tournaments?

Finlay Bealham and Cian Healy during the Irish captain's run at Twickenham

Statistics often attract too much attention in rugby. It’s a game that is so heavily analysed in such minuscule detail that people often start looking for trends that do not exist. It’s easy to be guided by the numbers when there are so many to choose from. One incident that stands out in my memory was when we were going through a difficult period at Munster and simply could not to get things to click.

We were looking under rocks and down the back of the couch for a magic formula that would somehow flick a switch and solve our problems. One of the coaches pulled up a stat which said teams that kicked 25 times or more in a game had a higher chance of winning matches at the time. I think we were averaging 22. A perplexed feeling filtered around the room as people wondered what we were supposed to do with this information.