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Trophy Winners #3 – Rugby Union (Men) 1984 to 2024

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South Africa have won the Rugby Championship for the first time since 2019.  That marks the last trophy to be won in the 2024 calendar year for men’s rugby worldwide and coincides with the start of the 2024/25 season in Europe.  This makes it a propitious time to publish my list of all trophy winners in men’s rugby worldwide since 1984,

Overview of My Rugby Trophy Winners Spreadsheet

My spreadsheet Trophy Winners- Rugby – Men – 2024 – v1.0 is up to date as of end of September 2024.  I consider this to be a work in progress so please do give me feedback on changes you’d like to see.

All data in this has been sourced from Wikipedia and includes winners and runner ups of the following 11 trophies –

  1. English Premiership since 1988
  2. French Top14 league since 1984**
  3. United Rugby Championship since 2002
  4. Super Rugby Championship since 1996
  5. English Rugby Cups since 1988**
  6. European Champions Cup since 1996 (plus semi finalists)
  7. European Challenge Cup since 1997
  8. World Cup since 1987 (plus semi finalists)
  9. Six Nations since 1984 (winners only)**
  10. Rugby Championship since 1996 (winners only)
  11. Lions Tours since 1989 (winners only)**

I decided to start recording trophies from 1984 onwards.  The trophies marked with ** go back earlier than that but I decided to use the first world cup cycle ending in 1987 as a reasonable starting point.  Of course the game went professional in 1996 which is why many trophies began from that date.

The spreadsheet has a number of sheets which I now explain in more detail.  Please note that all sheets are protected but there is no password if you want to unprotect a sheet.

Data1992-2024England

This sheet lists all winners of the two main domestic trophies in England i.e. the Premiership which began in the 1987/88 season and the Cup which began much earlier but here only winners and runners up since 1988 are recorded.

It also records when an English club won or lost a European Champions Cup or Challenge Cup final.  That allows winners of various doubles to be shown.

For information –

  • the league winner and runner up was decided on league placings up to 2002 but thereafter it was decided based on a playoff system as happens in all other leagues.
  • the cup competition was an open competition up till 2005 but from 2006, it has been a closed competition.
RankingsEngland

This sheet allows you to see which teams were the best in any time period.  To do this, change the starting year shown in cells B2.  You can then sort by any of the columns to find out which team was top.

By the way, the 15 teams listed above are the only English teams to have won trophies or been runner up since 1988.

For each team, I have counted how many times the team won the relevant trophy (columns C to F) or was a runner up (columns H to K).  Column M counts the number of times a team has been a winner or runner up in any competition.  Note EU1 refers to the Champions Cup and EU2 refers to the Challenge Cup.

Column N allows you to sort teams based on the value of each competition.  In row 21, I have arbitrarily given winners of the Champions Cup and the Premiership 6 points and runners up in those competitions 2 points.  For the Challenge Cup, I have halved those to 3 & 1 point respectively and for the domestic cup, I give the winner only 2 points.  However, you can change these points by editing the relevant yellow cells in row 21.

Data1992-2024World

This sheet lists all winners & runner ups since 1984 of the four main league tournaments, English Premiership, French Top 14, URC and Super Rugby, the two European club tournaments, the Six Nations, Rugby Championship, World Cup and Lions Tours.  It provides an at a glance overview of world rugby.  Teams are colour coded according to their country’s team colours.

RankingsWorld

This worksheet has three parts.

On the left are the rankings for each of the 4 league tournaments.  These show the number of times the listed teams won or were runner up in those leagues.  The points column is determined by the 2 yellow cells in the bottom right which you can edit.  Here I give 3 points for being champions and 1 point for being runner up.  It’s notable how all 4 leagues have a dominant team.

In the middle is a facility to rank teams playing in any of the European leagues and cups.  The table first shows the number of domestic leagues and European Trophies won (EU1 is Champions Cup, EU2 is Challenge Cup).  This is followed by the number of runner ups in the same tournaments.  Then the last 3 columns show the number of semi finals reached in the champions cup, the combined wins and runner ups followed by a points column.  Again the points can be edited in the yellow cells which appear above this table.  Here I use 6 points for winning domestic league or Champions Cup, 3 points for winning Challenge cup, 2 points for runner up in league or Champions cup and 1 point for runner up in Challenge Cup or semi finalist in Champions cup.

Note this table gives credit to the South African sides now playing in the European trophies for any Super Rugby titles and runner ups prior to 2020.

Then on the right there is a GOAT table (Greatest Of All Time).  This table is manually created at the moment and is there for information.  Three GOAT rankings are shown which are based on the above ranking table –

  • Number of domestic leagues or European trophies won.  Toulouse are the GOAT here followed by Leinster and Leicester.
  • Number of wins & runner ups in domestic leagues and Euro trophies.  Leinster are the GOAT here followed by Leicester and Toulouse.
  • Number of points won using points value as for ranking table above.  The GOAT here is Toulouse followed by Leinster and Leicester.

It’s worth noting that the URC did not start until 2002 which deprived Leinster of the chance to win some domestic trophies before then though they were competing in the European trophies before then.  If the GOAT table is changed to say the last 20 years say (2005-2024), then a consistent picture emerges.

WorldCups

This worksheet lists all winners, runner ups and semi finalists over the 10 world cups since 1987.   There is a summary table to the right of the table shown below.

 

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