Lions Battle Stats | Best Ball In Hand XV
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Lions Battle Stats | Best Ball In Hand XV
All eyes are on the opening British & Irish Lions test next saturday against the Wallabies. Andy Farrell has spent the tour trying combinations, seeing form and fitness and preparing for a series win. We have taken a deep dive into the stats and put together the most efficient ball in hand team from all the 2025 Lions games (excluding the AUNZ clash as we recheck the data). To calculate the below team we used positive and negative impacts of the game based only on data from ball in hand stats. These stats are a combination of effective and ineffective carries, try assits, tries, clean breaks, bad passes and six other stats. All players have their battle win % shown.
- Andrew Porter 14%
- Dan Sheehan 17%
- Tadhg Furlong 5%
Luke Cown-Dickie (31% Battle Losses) and Finaly Bealham (25% Battle Losses) were the only players in the front rows that were above 17% in this metric. Ronan Kelleher (94% Neutral) and Will Stuart (92% Neutral) were the only players above 80% in having a neutral impact with ball in hand.
- Maro Itoje 12%
- Joe McCarthy 12%
It is no surprise that both Itoje and McCarthy register high with their ball in hand impact but Joe McCarthy has the best battle loss percentage by some way with 4%, followed by Scott Cummings on 14%.
- Ollie Chessum 13%
- Josh vd Flier 22%
- Jack Conan 13%
Henry Pollock (7% Battle Losses) and Ben Earl (8% Battle Losses) have the lowest numbers in this metric with the next best player being Josh vd Flier (13%). vd Flier also has the lowest neutral percentage with 65%.
- Jamison Gibson-Park 6%
- Finn Russell 9%
Both Alex Mitchell and Jamison Gibson-Park registered a 6% Battle Win percentage but the Irish nine has just a 2% Battle Loss score giving him the edge. Had Tomos Williams not been injured and continued with his form he would have started above JGP
- Duhan vd Merwe 22%
- Sione Tuipulotu 7%
- Garry Ringrose 27%
- Mack Hansen 23%
- Blair Kinghorn 19%
Elliot Daly had the highest registered Battle Win numbers with 28% and would have made the 15 jumper in this team. Mack Hansen has the highest Battle Loss numbers with 28% followed by three players on 22% and those are Tommy Freeman, Duhan vd Merwe and Hugo Keenan
