Sport Scoring SolutionsRugby scoring: points, cards and a free scoring app
Rugby is South Africa's passion, from school derbies to club leagues. Keeping score is about more than the total: who scored, how, and who is in the sin bin. Our free rugby scorer handles 15s, sevens and tens.
Watch: how to play rugby
How points are scored
| Score | Points | How |
|---|---|---|
| Try | 5 | Grounding the ball in the opponents' in-goal area |
| Conversion | 2 | Kick at goal after a try, taken in line with where the try was scored |
| Penalty goal | 3 | Successful kick at goal from a penalty |
| Drop goal | 3 | Drop-kicking the ball over the crossbar in open play |
| Penalty try | 7 | Awarded when foul play prevents a probable try; no conversion is taken |
Match length
- 15s: two halves of 40 minutes. School and age-group rugby often plays shorter halves.
- Sevens: two halves of 7 minutes with a short break. Conversions are drop kicks, taken quickly.
- Tens: usually two halves of 10 minutes.
Yellow and red cards
- A yellow card means 10 minutes in the sin bin in 15s (2 minutes in sevens and tens). The app starts a timer that counts playing time and tells you when the player may return.
- A red card sends a player off for the rest of the match.
- World Rugby is running a global law trial of a 20-minute red card in elite rugby. For most red cards the player stays off, but after 20 minutes a replacement may come on. Deliberate and highly dangerous foul play still gets a full red card. The trial applies only where competitions adopt it, so it is an option in the app's setup.
How to use the rugby scorer
- Choose 15s, schools, sevens or tens and enter the team names.
- Start the clock with the referee. Tap Try, Conversion, Penalty, Drop goal or Penalty try as they happen and add the scorer if you like.
- Record cards with Card; sin-bin timers run with the match clock.
- At the end you get the score by half and a full match log with scorers, saved under My results.
These notes summarise World Rugby's laws for club and school matches. Competitions, especially at school and junior level, may set their own match lengths and variations.