According to the International Rugby Board and its Laws of the Game, rugby union matches are played over 80 minutes, divided into two halves of 40 minutes.
A rugby game lasts for between 100-120 minutes. However, only about 80 of these are dedicated to playing the match. The rest of the time is dedicated to timeouts and halftime. Rugby games are noticeably shorter than football games because the need to pause for advertisers is lower.
According to the International Rugby Board, the length of every Rugby League game is between 100-200 minutes, although both halves of a rugby union game are 40 minutes. While the average rugby union match is no less than 80 minutes, the regular sevens game is structured into two halves of seven minutes, with a two-minute half-time break. Rugby league matches typically run 100-200 minutes, including a 15-minute break at half-time.
A Rugby League game is structured as two halves of 40 minutes, with extra time added for injuries at the end of each half. The match is divided into two halves, and the average rugby match is longer than a US football match but shorter than a football game. A rugby union game, a full-contact football game that is believed to have evolved from football, is played for 80 minutes.
In that way, the rugby game is like the football game — if you are looking for an example of a U.S. sport that has a comparable level of physical contact, played with dead balls interspersed.
Rugby Compared to American Football
Like American football, there are times that a rugby ball will go off the field and into the spectators. While not every match has the ball winding up in the stands, if it does, then that could take some of the tempi out of the game.
In other games, once the sports reach either the breaking point or end of the play, the games are over as soon as the clock hits zero. Hypothetically, the time on the clock may have reached zero by the time of halftime, but whichever team has the ball still might be in possession. Unlike in other sports, in which play ends once the clock hits zero, a rugby half does not end until the play breaks down after time runs out on the clock.
Because of stoppages, a rugby union halftime timer might read 40 minutes, but a half would go a little longer than that. In this sport, unlike in some others, like soccer, the match is stopped as soon as the timer hits 80 minutes. Interestingly, rugby union matches can last far longer than 80 minutes, because a match can end through natural means, with the ball going dead.
The Comparative Lengths of Rugby Leagues
Compared with other sports, rugby leagues’ length is much more tightly tied to decisions made by the umpires. The official’s timer is generally kept running throughout the rugby union game, only stopping due to injuries or waiting for the referee’s video decisions. In rugby union matches, stops occur every time a player is substituted, a new ball is bowled, there is an error from the players, such as forward passing of a football, or a new piece of equipment is put into position by the official timekeeper.
Beyond these differences, there are several similarities between the two games, the most notable being the fact that timeouts are not called in a rugby match. These rules aren’t quite so firmly established for junior and mini-rugby matches, where the halftime duration is truly up to the referee.
It seems that 80-minute rules in rugby are applicable for attacking and defending teams with 15 players apiece. In Rugby 7s, in which teams have seven players, matches are shorter still, clocking only 14 minutes in total, seven minutes in each half. For decades, rugby matches in this sport were an impressive eighty minutes, which allowed teams plenty of time to get their full bearings.
Common Play Times Within Rugby Matches
Research published in a 2011 IRB report found that out of an 80-minute rugby game, on average, the ball will be in play for just 35 minutes. The full report indicated satisfaction with having increased the amount of time that the ball was actually in play from the figure achieved in the 1995 Rugby World Cup, to 35 minutes and 25 seconds, or 44% of the allocated 80 minutes in a rugby match.
This would bring the average time the ball is in play down to around 44 minutes or 55% of the nominal 80 minutes specified by the Laws of the Game. Under the rules set out by the International Rugby Board, an Under-19 match will be played over 70 minutes, divided into two halves of 35 minutes. Now, you can probably understand pretty clearly that Rugby League will be played over 80 minutes with 2 halves of 40 minutes. Well, depending on a team’s mutual decisions, high school rugby matches are either 40 minutes or occasionally 70 minutes.
While the rugby match is played in its own match time of 80 minutes, it takes more with the intermissions, injuries, or game interruptions in the knockout stages. Although the rugby half is 40 minutes, it does not mean halftime is taken 40 minutes later.
Overtime Expectations for Rugby Games
One thing that you have to realize is that rugby can be given overtime, and a rugby match that is longer than 80 minutes may get extended by several five minutes, and this may happen again until a side score.
When we talk about the rugby game of 10, it is going to last 100m x 70m expansive Rugby, in 10 minutes rounds with two intermissions. Rugby sevens matches are structured with two halves of seven minutes each, however, when adding in the two-minute half-time break, and the time-outs made up of injuries and stoppages in the overall game, this can vary. Rugby union matches are timed using two halves which are 40 minutes long, but no half-time stoppages are used in case the players have to leave to vomit.
In knockout games, like those in Rugby World Cup, teams will play two 10-minute halves, then play a one-off 10-minute sudden-death period if a side is still tied. In less common cases, sudden death is played if, at 100 minutes, both teams are still tied.
Only knockout rugby matches feature extra time, and if the sides are level after 80 minutes, then a standard game is declared drawn. In most matches, it is not necessary to declare a winner, therefore, if two rugby sides are level on points at the end of the regulation 80 minutes, the umpires call the scrum and declare a draw.