Rugby's highest-scoring matches: Where does Saracens' PREM Cup win rank?

It was a truly remarkable opening weekend of the PREM Rugby Cup, with an aggregate of 365 points scored across the four matches.

On any other weekend, the point-a-minute, 43-40 thriller between Bristol and Gloucester, won by the Bears, would have likely eclipsed all others as a free-for-all.

But at the same time as they were going at each other hammer and tongs in the west, Saracens and Northampton served up a scoreline that was barely believable.

Twenty tries were scored – 14 to Saracens and six to Northampton – with young Jack Bracken claiming a nine-minute hat-trick.

As well as adding more fuel to the fire for those championing a reform of the try bonus system in elite English rugby, Saracens’ incredible comeback from 28-19 down at half-time to win 96-42 raised speculation that it could be the highest scoring club match of all time.

Wrong.

With historical data of this ilk sadly no longer available online, RugbyPass enlisted the help of unrivalled rugby statistician Stuart Farmer to find out where it belongs in the pecking order of points-fests.

For a match involving two, top-flight professional English sides, it did beat the previous record, which was set only four months ago in May and also involved Northampton. On that occasion, it was Saints who handed out the punishment, thrashing a weakened Bristol 94-33 for a combined total of 127 points.

Between them, Saracens and Northampton beat the record by 11 points on Saturday. But it doesn’t even make the top 20 when taking all competitive fixtures into consideration since the game went professional.

The ‘all-English’ record for most points scored in a match is Newcastle’s 156-5 win over Rugby Lions in Allied Dunbar Premiership 2 (now the Champ) in October 1996.

Bankrolled by Sir John Hall’s chequebook, Newcastle blew hapless Rugby out of the water, scoring 24 tries, with four players bagging hat-tricks (Gary Armstrong, George Graham, Ross Nesdale and Dean Ryan).

At the time, it was highest-scoring match in senior club rugby around the world, a record that has only been beaten times since.

In terms of competitive matches, Lowveld set the record two years before Newcastle ran riot with their 163-10 win over Transkei. Even though it was in the Rural Division of South Africa’s Currie Cup, it was still classed as a first-class fixture.

The second-highest scoring match in first-class rugby also took place in South Africa, the Golden Lions putting Limpopo Blue Bulls to the sword 161-3 in 2013.

Winger Anthony Volmink was the star of the show, registering a hat-trick inside the first half an hour and trebling his tally with a ninth score three minutes from time.

The highest-scoring match outside of South Africa, and the third-highest overall, took place in France in 2001 when Clermont Auvergne beat Racing 160-3 in the French League Cup in 2001.

Benetton’s 150-13 dismantling of Amatori Catania in Italy’s Serie A in 1996 edges Newcastle v Rugby into fifth place.

Club rugby’s Top 5 highest-scoring first-class matches:

1. SA Rural Transkei 10-163 Lowveld (173pts), Currie Cup Rural Division, Aug 1994
2. Golden Lions 161-3 Limpopo (164pts), Vodacom Cup, April 2013
3. Clermont Auvergne 160-3 Racing (163pts), Ligue de la Ligue, Feb 2001
4. Benetton 150-13 Amatori Catania (163pts), March 1997
5. Newcastle 156-5 Rugby Lions (161pts), Allied Dunbar Prem 2