Try-scorers across eras: every All Black's try rate adjusted for the rugby of his time

Will Jordan has scored 56 tries in 63 Tests, more than any All Black in history, and he has done it at close to a try a Test. But when Ron Jarden was scoring tries on the wing in the 1950s, the All Blacks as a whole managed two a Test. A try then was a rarer thing than it is now, and a wing who scored one every other Test was doing something closer to what Jordan does today. This is the companion to our rankings of every All Blacks captain and coach: every try-scorer, measured against the rugby of his own time.

How often the All Blacks scored

The All Blacks scored about four tries a Test before the First World War, then fewer than two for much of the middle of the century, when the game was dominated by forwards and goalkicking. The modern rate, about four and three-quarter tries a Test since 2012, is the highest in their history. A try was also worth less: three points until 1971, four until mid-1992 and five since. We deal with points in a separate story; here we count tries.

How we adjusted

We use two measures, and both come from New Zealand Rugby's official match records for all 673 Tests, every scorer reconciled against every final score.

• Era-adjusted tries per Test. A player's tries per Test, scaled by how many tries the All Blacks scored per Test in the decades he played compared with today. Ron Jarden's 7 tries in 16 Tests came when the All Blacks averaged two tries a Test; today they average 4.75, so his rate is worth more than double in modern terms.
• Share of team tries. The cleanest measure of all: of the tries the All Blacks scored in the Tests a player played, what share did he score? It needs no assumptions about eras.

For interest we also show a modern-equivalent career: the era-adjusted rate multiplied by the number of Tests he would have played in today's calendar of about 13 a year. Treat it as an illustration, not a prediction, because it assumes a player would have kept his place for as long in the professional game.

We include players with at least 15 Tests and five tries.

The ranking: tries per Test, adjusted for era

What the numbers say

John Gallagher comes out on top: 13 tries in 18 Tests between 1987 and 1989, at a time when the All Blacks scored a little over three tries a Test. The fullback of the 1987 World Cup side, he went to rugby league in 1990, which is why his Test career was so short.

Next come three men from the lean decades, Ralph Caulton (1959-64), Ron Jarden (1951-56) and Stu Wilson (1977-83). In raw terms none of them looks remarkable. Adjusted, each scored at about a try a Test in modern currency. Caulton scored a third of all the All Blacks' tries in the Tests he played, the highest share of any All Black with ten Tests.

Ian Kirkpatrick is the surprise. A flanker, he scored 16 tries in 39 Tests between 1967 and 1977, when the whole team scored fewer than two a Test. That is nearly a fifth of all the All Blacks' tries in his Tests, a share most wings never reach, and it makes him the outstanding try-scoring forward in the All Blacks' history. His adjusted rate is higher than Jonah Lomu's.

The professional-era wings sit close together. Christian Cullen, Jeff Wilson, Julian Savea, Doug Howlett and Will Jordan all score between 0.86 and 0.93 adjusted tries a Test. Cullen edges them because the late 1990s, when he played, produced slightly fewer tries than the 2010s.

Jonah Lomu is 18th, with 37 tries in 63 Tests. Adjusted, he scored about two tries in every three Tests. His impact on the game was larger than any number can show, but as a scorer of tries the record puts him a little behind the best.

The career list, as scored

Jordan holds the record outright and is still playing. Beauden Barrett is third on the list with 48 from 147 Tests, many of them at first five-eighth.

The highest share of the team's tries

Records in a single Test

Marc Ellis scored six tries against Japan in Bloemfontein at the 1995 World Cup, the All Blacks record for one Test. Jeff Wilson scored five against Fiji in 1997 and Will Jordan five against Tonga in 2021. The oldest of the four-try performances is Duncan McGregor's against England at Crystal Palace in 1905.

Why it matters

Try-scoring records are always going to be dominated by modern players, because they play three or four times as many Tests and the game produces more tries. Adjusting for both shows that the great finishers of the middle of the century, Jarden, Caulton, Stu Wilson and the forward Kirkpatrick, were every bit as productive as the professional stars. It also shows that Will Jordan's record is not just a product of the calendar: even adjusted, he is among the very best.

Sources: New Zealand Rugby, All Blacks statistics (stats.allblacks.com), line-ups and scorers for every Test 1903-2026; RUGBE analysis.