Rugby scoring system explained: every way to score

A try is five points in rugby union and four in rugby league. That one disagreement, five against four, is where almost every other difference in how the two codes score follows from.

Get the rugby scoring system explained as a list of numbers and you learn the values. Get it explained as a set of ratios and you learn what each code is trying to make teams do, which is a more useful thing to know, because the ratios are the part the law-makers argue about. Nobody has ever seriously proposed changing the conversion from two. The relationship between a try and a penalty has been fought over for a century.

Here is every scoring play in both codes, what it is worth, and what the value is for.

The five ways to score in rugby union

Union has exactly five scoring events. There is no sixth, and anything that looks like a sixth is one of these five under a different name.

A try, five points. Awarded when a player grounds the ball in the opposition in-goal area, which means downward pressure on the ball while it is on or over the goal line. The ball has to be held or pressed down, not merely dropped.

A conversion, two points. The kick that follows a try, taken from anywhere on a line running back from the point where the try was grounded. A try scored in the corner therefore leaves a kick from the touchline; a try under the posts leaves a kick from in front of them.

A penalty goal, three points. A place kick or drop kick at goal taken from a penalty award.

A drop goal, three points. A kick at goal taken in open play, where the ball must touch the ground before the foot strikes it.

A penalty try, seven points. Awarded when the referee judges that a try would probably have been scored but for foul play by the defending side. No conversion is attempted.

That is the complete list. Five events, four distinct values, and a maximum of seven points from a single sequence of play.

• 5Try
• 2Conversion after a try
• 3Penalty goal
• 3Drop goal

The values as Law 8 states them. A converted try is a try plus a conversion, not a separate scoring event.

The thing that trips people up is that a converted try is not a scoring event with a value of seven. It is two events, five and two, and the second one can fail. That matters more than it sounds, because a side that scores three tries and converts none has fifteen points, and a side that scores two tries, converts both, and lands a penalty has seventeen. Fewer tries, more points, and the scoreboard is right.

The try is five points, and the conversion is what makes it seven

The try is the only score in union that rewards getting the ball to a specific piece of ground. Everything else rewards kicking accuracy. That asymmetry is the whole design.

A conversion is not a free two points and was never meant to be. The kick is taken from a line perpendicular to the goal line through the point of grounding, so the angle is set by where the try was scored. Score in the middle and the kick is nearly automatic for a professional. Score two metres from the touchline and the same kicker is working at the edge of his range and against the angle.

This produces a strategic wrinkle that casual viewers miss entirely. A player who has broken clear near the corner flag and could dive in immediately will sometimes keep running laterally towards the posts, accepting the risk of being tackled, because the two points are worth more than the certainty. Whether that is good judgement depends on the game state, and a player who gets it wrong and is bundled into touch has thrown away five points to chase two.

Grounding is where the try law is fussiest, and the fussiness is deliberate. A player who dives, loses the ball forward and then recovers it has knocked on. A player who is held up over the line and never gets downward pressure on the ball has not scored, and the attacking side gets a five-metre scrum rather than five points. Grounding has to be an act, which is why the television match official is so often asked whether there was pressure rather than whether the ball crossed the line. The mechanics of that review process are covered in detail in the piece on how the television match official works.

Why a penalty is worth three, and what that does to the game

Three points for a penalty is the single most consequential number in rugby union, and it is consequential because of its ratio to seven rather than its absolute value.

Work through what the ratio permits. Two penalties are six, which is less than a converted try. Three penalties are nine, which is more than one converted try and less than two. A side that kicks every penalty it earns and scores no tries at all needs three penalties to beat a side that scores one converted try and concedes two, and that is a real and common scoreline rather than a hypothetical.

That arithmetic is why the penalty count can decide a tight match without a single try being scored, and why the three-point penalty has been attacked from both directions for decades.

The case for lowering it is simple. A penalty is an easier, lower-risk way to accumulate points than attacking, so a high penalty value rewards the side that provokes offences rather than the side that creates chances. Drop it to two and teams would attack more.

The case against lowering it is also simple, and stronger than it is usually given credit for. The penalty is the only sanction available for most offences short of a card, and its deterrent value is exactly its point value. Cut it to two and a defending team under pressure five metres from its own line gets a cheaper way out: concede, give up two, reset. The high penalty is what makes repeated infringement near your own line too expensive to use as a defensive tactic. Under the current value a team conceding three penalties in its own twenty-two has handed over more than a converted try without the opposition having to beat anybody.

Both arguments are true at once, which is why the number has not moved.

The drop goal, the only score nobody defends properly

A drop goal is three points taken in open play, and the ball must bounce before the kick. That bounce requirement is what keeps it rare and keeps it hard.

Because it is worth the same as a penalty, a drop goal is often described as a penalty you did not have to earn. That is the right way to think about it. A side camped inside the opposition half with the ball, unable to break a defensive line, can convert territory into three points without needing an offence to be committed. In the closing minutes of a level match this is the most efficient scoring route available, and it is the reason a fly-half will sometimes drift into the pocket behind a ruck when the attack is still going forward.

The defensive problem is that the drop goal is almost impossible to prevent without giving up something else. Charging the kicker means breaking out of the defensive line, which opens a gap. Staying in the line means allowing the kick. Most sides accept the kick, which is a reasonable choice and also an admission that three points are cheaper than a try.

Rugby league took a different view of the same kick, which is the next section, and the difference between three points and one point changes the behaviour completely.

The penalty try, and the rule change that removed the kick

A penalty try is awarded when foul play by the defending team prevents a try that probably would have been scored. The judgement is about probability rather than certainty, and it is the referee's alone.

It is worth seven points, and no conversion is taken.

The change to the automatic seven was a tidy piece of law-making. Under the older arrangement a penalty try was five points plus a conversion from in front of the posts, which was nearly always successful but not always. That left an odd outcome: a team that had been illegally denied a try could be awarded the try and then miss the kick, ending with five points when the side that had cheated would have conceded seven had it defended legally. Making the award a flat seven closed that gap, and it also saved the two or three minutes the kick took.

The second half of the change is the part that matters on the field. Because no kick is required, play restarts with a drop-out or kick-off rather than a conversion, and the offending player is usually also carded. A penalty try is therefore seven points and a fourteen-player defence for the next ten minutes, which is a far heavier sanction than the number alone suggests.

Rugby league scores the same events differently

League recognises fewer scoring events than union and prices them lower.

A try, four points. Grounded in the in-goal area, on the same principle as union.

A goal, two points. League uses one word for both kinds of place kick. A conversion after a try is a goal. A penalty kick at goal is also a goal. Both are two points.

A field goal, one point. The open-play drop kick, which league calls a field goal rather than a drop goal.

That is three events and three values, against union's five and four. The consequences run right through how a league match feels.

• Rugby union
• Rugby league

Converted try76

Unconverted try54

Penalty kick at goal32

Open-play drop kick31

Values as each code's law book states them. The converted try figure is the try plus the kick, not a separate award.

Show the numbers

The same scoring plays priced by the two codes

Item	Rugby union	Rugby league
Converted try	7	6
Unconverted try	5	4
Penalty kick at goal	3	2
Open-play drop kick	3	1

Look at what the penalty value does. In union a penalty is three, which is sixty per cent of an unconverted try, so kicking for goal is often the better play. In league a penalty is two against a try worth four, so a penalty goal is worth half a try, and crucially it is worth less than the position a team can get from kicking for touch and taking the attacking set that follows. League sides therefore decline kickable penalties routinely in situations where a union side would never consider it. Same event, different price, completely different decision.

The field goal is the sharper example. One point for a kick that takes the same skill as a union drop goal worth three. The effect is that a league field goal is almost never a way of accumulating points and almost always a way of breaking a tie, which is why it is a feature of extra time and the final minute and barely exists at any other moment in a match. A side four points down does not want a field goal. A side level with ninety seconds left wants nothing else.

The broader structural differences between the codes, from the tackle count to the number of players, are set out in the comparison of rugby league against rugby union.

The two-point field goal, league's newest number

The National Rugby League recognises a long-range field goal worth two points, awarded when the kick is taken from beyond the forty metre line.

This is the most interesting scoring innovation in either code in years, because it was introduced to solve a problem that the one-point field goal had created. A one-point kick taken from close range is a low-risk, low-reward play, and in extra time it produced a predictable pattern: work into field goal range, take the shot, repeat. Pricing the long kick at two gives a team an alternative that is harder and worth more, and it gives a defending side something new to worry about from distance.

The rule also quietly changed what a two-point deficit means in the last minute. Under a one-point-only regime, a side two behind had to score a try or a penalty goal. With the long field goal available, it has a third route, and the defending side has to respect a kicker standing on his own forty-five.

What the point values actually incentivise

Strip away the detail and each code's scoring table is a statement about what it wants to see.

Union prices the kick high relative to the try. Three for a penalty against seven for a converted try means a disciplined, territorially dominant side with a good kicker can win without crossing the line. That is a legitimate way to play rugby and the laws say so.

League prices the kick low relative to the try. Two for a penalty against six for a converted try, and one for a field goal, means almost nothing is available except scoring tries. A league side that cannot score tries cannot win, however disciplined it is.

Neither is a mistake. They are different sports with different ideas about what the reward should be attached to, and the point values are the clearest place that difference is written down.

1. 1The scoring actA try grounded in the in-goal area, a penalty goal from an award, a drop goal from open play, or a penalty try awarded by the referee for foul play that prevented a probable try.
2. 2If it is a tryFive points go on the board immediately. The conversion attempt follows and is a separate event with its own outcome.
3. 3The conversionTaken from a line running back at right angles from the point of grounding, so the angle is set by where the try was scored. Two points if successful, nothing if not. A corner try leaves a far harder kick than one under the posts.
4. 4If it is a penalty goal or drop goalThree points, and the two are worth exactly the same. The only difference is how the opportunity arose: an offence for the penalty, open play for the drop goal.
5. 5If it is a penalty trySeven points, with no conversion attempted. The value already includes the kick, so the restart skips straight ahead and the offending player is usually carded as well.
6. 6The restartA successful or missed conversion is followed by a kick-off from halfway. A successful penalty or drop goal is also followed by a kick-off. A missed penalty or drop goal that goes dead gives the defending side a drop-out or a scrum, depending on how it went dead.
7. 7The scoreboardTotals are built from these four values only. A converted try is five plus two rather than a seven-point award, which is why a side with more tries can still be behind.

The full sequence from the scoring act to the restart, with values as Law 8 states them.

How the numbers got here

The try was once worth nothing. The word is a remnant of that: grounding the ball earned a side the opportunity to try a kick at goal, and the kick was the score. Everything since has been a slow transfer of value from the kick to the act of crossing the line.

Two of the steps in that transfer are well documented and uncontested. The try was raised from three points to four in 1971, and from four to five in 1992. Both increases were made for the same stated reason: to reward try-scoring relative to kicking, and in particular to make the penalty a less attractive alternative. Each time the try went up, the gap between a converted try and a pair of penalties widened.

The direction has never reversed. No governing body has ever reduced the value of a try, and the penalty has stayed at three through both increases, which means the ratio has shifted steadily in favour of attacking rugby across more than fifty years without a single change to the penalty itself.

Two scoring plays that once existed in union have been removed altogether rather than repriced. A goal could once be kicked from a mark, where a player catching a kick cleanly earned the right to a shot at goal, and that route to points no longer exists. Removing a scoring play is a more aggressive intervention than changing its value, and it tells you the law-makers were not only adjusting incentives but deciding which kinds of play they wanted the game to contain.

Sevens, tens and the variants that keep union's values

Rugby sevens uses the same point values as the fifteen-a-side game. A try is five, a conversion two, a penalty three, a drop goal three.

What sevens changes is the procedure rather than the price. Conversions are taken as drop kicks rather than place kicks, and they are taken quickly, which is a concession to a format where a match lasts fourteen minutes and a lengthy place-kick routine would consume a meaningful fraction of it. Kick-offs also go to the scoring side rather than the conceding side, which is a scoring-adjacent rule with a large effect: a team that has just scored gets the ball back.

The point values surviving unchanged into a format with half the players and a seventh of the duration is a reasonable signal that the values themselves are considered settled. The arguments in union are about the laws that produce scoring opportunities, not about what the opportunities are worth.

The near-misses that score nothing at all

A surprising amount of rugby happens in the gap between almost scoring and scoring, and none of it is worth anything. Knowing the list is part of knowing the scoring system, because each item is a sequence that looks like points and is not.

Held up over the line. The attacker gets the ball across the goal line but never achieves downward pressure, because defenders have wrapped the ball or lifted it. No try. In union the attacking side gets a five-metre scrum, which is a strong attacking position and nothing more.

Grounded short. The ball touches down a few centimetres before the line. No try, play continues or a ruck forms, and the attacking side has lost nothing except the chance.

A knock-on in the act of scoring. The most expensive error in the game. A player who loses the ball forward while diving has knocked on, and a scrum goes to the defending side. A certain five becomes a turnover of possession in the space of a metre.

Touching down in your own in-goal. A defender grounding the ball in his own in-goal area is not a score for anybody. It produces a drop-out or a scrum depending on how the ball got there, and it is the defensive equivalent of a reset.

A kick at goal that misses. Nothing, and the consequence depends on where the ball goes. A missed penalty that is caught in the field of play is simply live ball. One that goes dead gives the defending side a restart, which is why a long-range penalty attempt is a genuine gamble on field position rather than a free shot.

None of these appear on a scoreboard, and all of them change matches. A side that is held up three times has produced three try-scoring attacks and has zero points to show for it, which is a sequence that looks like dominance in the possession statistics and like nothing at all in the score.

Where the two codes agree

For all the divergence, there are three points of genuine agreement, and they are the places where the scoring systems share a common ancestor rather than a modern committee decision.

The conversion is two points in both codes. The only value the two tables share. Neither code has ever moved it, and neither has ever shown much interest in doing so.

Grounding means downward pressure in both codes. The try law reads differently in each book and arrives at the same test. A ball dropped over the line is not a score in either sport.

Kicks at goal are taken at the posts rather than at a target zone. Both codes resolved, long ago, that the reward for accuracy should be attached to the same uprights and crossbar, and neither has ever experimented with a wider target for a lesser score or a narrower one for more.

The disagreements, by contrast, are all about relative value. Union decided that the kick deserved to stay expensive and raised the try around it. League decided the kick should be cheap and left it cheap, then added a long-range exception when the cheapness produced a repetitive endgame. Two codes, one shared starting point, and a century of pricing the same acts differently.

Common scorelines and how to read them backwards

A rugby scoreline can be decoded, and doing it is a quick way to understand how a match was won without having seen it.

In union, work in sevens, fives and threes. A score of 23 can be three converted tries and a penalty, or two converted tries and three penalties, or four tries with three conversions missed and nothing else. Those are three completely different matches. A score of 9 can only be three penalties or some mix of penalties and drop goals, and tells you nobody crossed the line. A score ending in a digit that cannot be built from sevens and fives without threes, such as 16, requires at least one penalty or drop goal.

In league, work in sixes, fours and twos. A score of 22 can be three converted tries and two penalty goals, or four converted tries would be 24, so it cannot be that. A score of 25 in league requires a field goal, because every other value is even, and that single odd digit tells you a match probably went to extra time or was settled by a one-point kick. The oddness is diagnostic in a way union scores never are.

That last point is worth keeping. Because league's only odd-valued score is the field goal, an odd league scoreline is immediately informative. Union, with a five and a three in the table, produces odd totals constantly and tells you nothing by parity alone.

Who actually puts the points on the board

The scoring values are fixed, but the decision that a score has happened is not, and in both codes it belongs to one person with help.

The referee awards the try. Nobody else can, and no appeal exists once the award is made and play has restarted. What has changed over the professional era is how much evidence the referee is allowed to gather before deciding, which is a different thing from changing who decides.

The touch judges or assistant referees rule on whether a kick at goal has gone over, standing one at each post and raising a flag together for a successful kick. That is the oldest piece of officiating technology in the sport and it has never needed replacing, because the question is binary and two people looking up at the same thing from the same position almost never disagree.

The video official rules on matters of fact referred to it. A grounding, a foot in touch, a forward pass in the build-up, a knock-on three phases earlier. The limit is important: the video official does not re-award a score on a judgement the referee has already made about probability, which is why a penalty try is one of the hardest decisions in the game to review. Probability is not a fact, and the apparatus is built to check facts.

What follows from all of this is a small but real asymmetry in how the two directions of error get corrected. A try awarded and then checked can be taken away. A try not awarded, with play waved on and a scrum given, is far less likely to be revisited, because nobody has flagged anything to revisit. Attacking sides have learned the lesson and now claim a grounding loudly even when they are not sure, which is a rational response to a review system that checks what it is pointed at.

Reading a rugby scoreboard properly

Three habits turn a scoreline into information.

Count the tries separately from the points. Broadcast graphics usually show both. A side leading by six with one try to three has been outplayed and is winning on discipline and kicking, which is a position that can hold or collapse depending on whether the penalty count turns.

Check whether the kicking has been the difference. Four tries and two conversions is twenty-four. Four tries and four conversions is twenty-eight. A four-point swing from the same attacking performance is routine, and it decides a lot of close matches without appearing in any attacking statistic.

Ask what the trailing side needs, in units. Seven behind is one converted try. Eight behind is one converted try and something else, which is a materially worse position than seven even though the gap is one point. In league, five behind needs a converted try, and seven behind needs a try plus a goal plus more, so the step from six to seven is the one that changes the plan. Those cliff edges are also why the losing bonus point in league tables and in the bonus point systems used across rugby tends to be set at seven points in union competitions: it is the value of the single score that would have changed the result.

Do that and the scoreboard stops being a pair of numbers and becomes a summary of which code's incentives the two sides chose to play along with. The rest of the rugby explainers here work the same way, starting from what the laws actually say before asking what they are for, and the Six Nations format is the natural next step if you want to see the seven-point threshold doing work in a league table.