At the 2025 Men's Six Nations Championship, England had the highest goal kicking success rate, with ***** percent. In the previous year, Scotland had a near perfect kicking success rate, with Finn Russell only missing *** kick from the tee throughout the tournament. Uncharacteristically, Russell faltered in his kicking in the 2025 Six Nations, missing multiple conversions in Scotland's match against England.

Across selected Rugby World Cup tournaments from 1987 to 2019, the share of kick types changed dramatically in some cases and remained relatively similar in others. The two most pronounced changes came post-2003 with box kicks and territorial kicks. Box kicks went from making up a share of **** percent of all kicks at the 2003 tournament to ** percent at the 2019 tournament. Meanwhile, territorial kicks experienced a downturn from ** percent in 2003 to ** percent in 2019.

As of October 2023, England fly-half Jonny Wilkinson was the all-time highest point scorer in the men's Rugby World Cup. Of the 277 points Wilkinson scored when representing England on rugby's global stage, the most significant came during the 2003 World Cup final when he kicked a last-minute drop goal to secure England's first World Cup title. In second place was Scotland fullback Gavin Hastings, who accumulated 227 points during his three World Cup campaigns from 1987 to 1995. Meanwhile, South Africa's Handré Pollard sat in third with 195 points. Pollard kicked the Springboks to their fourth World Cup victory in 2023, scoring all of South Africa's points in the final from the kicking tee.

Here are a few use cases for this project:

1. Sports Analytics: "KickTrack-Balls" could be used to conduct automatic detection and tracking of rugby balls during matches, aiding in advanced game analysis, player performance assessment, and reporting relevant statistics such as the number of successful passes, kicks, or goal attempts.

2. Video Game Development: Developers could use this model as a basis for creating sports video games. By identifying how the ball moves in real scenarios, they can simulate practical and realistic movements of rugby balls in games.

3. Augmented Reality Applications: The model could be deployed in AR tools designed for training and strategy planning in Rugby. By recognizing the ball's position and movements, these applications can overlay relevant information or predictions.

4. Broadcast Enhancement: The model could be integrated into broadcast systems to provide an improved viewing experience for sports enthusiasts. It can help to highlight ball movements, goal scores, and offside situations in real-time matches.

5. Coaching Aid: With "KickTrack-Balls," coaches can analyze players' performance during training or actual games. It will aid in understanding the players' interaction with the ball, improving passing, kicking techniques, and overall team strategy.

In the 2023 Men's Six Nations Championship, the national team with the most tries was France. Of the ** tries they scored, the most frequent source was from turnovers and kicks, numbering **** tries in total. While every other team that year also scored tries from turnovers and kicks, no other team scored the majority of their tries from them. Instead, the main source of tries for the other teams that year came from line-outs, totaling ** for all teams as opposed to ** from turnovers and kicks.