ABSTRACT
The aim of this chapter is to quantify collective experience and to assess its impact on team performance in international women’s rugby sevens. We also observe the evolution of winning probability of a game according to the score. Scoresheets of all games from the Women’s Sevens World Series were collected from 2012 to 2019. The cumulative shared selections (CSS) value was computed as a collective experience indicator. The number of points scored was used to estimate team performance. A multistate model was used to describe the evolution of matches characterised by the score as a function of time. Regarding the indicators, teams with a higher CSS scored, on average, 9.6 ± 19.8 points more than their opponents with a lesser one (p value = 0.001). Regarding the proportion of winning according to time, the team scoring the first try won in 76.7% of matches. According to the transition probability matrix, a team leading the game at the end of the first half had a victory probability of 84.7%. These results may help coaching staff to create the most competitive squad for each competition and to better manage players’ substitutions during a game in order to optimise the recuperation process over a tournament.
