Understanding HFA for Six Nations rugby betting

Understanding HFA for Six Nations rugby betting

By Michael Gales Feb 26, 2013

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At the Six Nations, just like in other sports, teams play better at home. Calculating how much the home field advantage affects each side, however, could make a big difference in Six Nations rugby betting. This article evaluates HFA since the start of the six nations tournament.

An analysis of the Six Nations competition since its inception in 2000 showed that teams playing at home won 59.31% of games over 13 seasons, proving a distinct home advantage.

This figure increases to an even more impressive 73.4% when we remove the two teams who have yet to win the Six Nations (Italy and Scotland). While this information proves the widely held belief that home teams perform better, it gets more interesting when comparing the HFA of individual teams.

HFA for individual teams in Six Nations betting

To calculate the Home Field Advantage, take the number of points scored at home per season (HF) and minus the number of points conceded at home (HA). Then divide by the number of home games played in a season (2 or 3 – three teams play at home twice one year, and three the following).

For the table below, we calculated each nations’ results for the past five seasons and their average for the entire Six Nations tournament.

It is no coincidence that the two most successful nations in the Six Nations tournament France (five championships) and England (four championships) have the highest average home points differentials, scoring (on average) 12.09 and 18.47 more points than they concede at home.

What is interesting is that despite being the third most successful nation with three championships, Wales (4.36) actually have a lower average home points differential than Ireland (11.33). Even after eliminating Wales’ disastrous 2003 wooden spoon campaign, their average home points differential only works out at (5.06).

Italy and Scotland have performed the worst in the Six Nations, holding 12 of the 13 wooden spoons between them – Italy (9) and Scotland (3) – and it comes as no surprise to see them both have a negative average home points differential of -14.03 and -5.38 respectively.

However, to understand each nations HFA better we need to compare each nations home points differential with their away differential to note just how much better they play under the influence of a home crowd.

Home vs. Away Points Differential

Unsurprisingly, England tops the list for teams with much better home results, scoring an average of 12.89 points at home than they do on the road. Ireland and Wales aren’t too far from this number, with the Irish scoring 11.58 and the Welsh at 10.36 more points at home than away.

Scotland, Italy and France all have notably smaller differences between their home and away results, scoring 7.32, 7 and 4.53 more points at home (respectively).

What causes these big differences is unknown, but there are numerous factors that could have a major influence. Discovering these factors – and noting when they are in play – could go a long way to improving your Six Nations betting results.

Possible Influences of HFA?

While the stats suggest each team performs better at home than away, it’s almost impossible to quantify this to a specific home-field advantage handicap. This is due to a number of external influences, whereby each influence affects the other.

One major reason is that each nation’s mean HFA changes year-on-year. Another is that no one has managed to objectively define the factors that influence HFA, which could range from form, to crowds, to future intentions and a feel-good factor that winning breeds.

Further work and analysis needs to be done, however there may be an opportunity to make a Six Nations rugby betting profit by working out a teams HFA more accurately than the bookmaker.

*Odds subject to change

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