Triple Crown (rugby union)

In rugby union, the Triple Crown is an honour contested annually by the "Home Nations" – i.e. England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales who compete within the larger Six Nations Championship. If any one of these teams defeats all three other teams, they win the Triple Crown.

The Six Nations Championship also includes France and Italy, but their involvement in the tournament has no influence on the result of the Triple Crown, although it means that the winners of the Triple Crown are not necessarily the winners of the Championship as a whole.

England won the first Triple Crown – although the phrase was not in use at the time – in the inaugural 1883 series of the original rugby union Home Nations Championship. The latest winners are England, who won by beating Wales at the Twickenham on 7 March, having already beaten Scotland and Ireland in the 2020 Six Nations Championship.

Traditionally the Triple Crown was an informal honour with no trophy associated with it. However a trophy now exists, which has been awarded to Triple Crown winners since 2006.

Name

The origins of the name Triple Crown are uncertain. The concept dates to the original Home Nations Championship, predecessor of the Six Nations Championship, when the competition only involved England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales. Like the modern Grand Slam, the Triple Crown was an informal honour to a team that won the Championship with straight victories.

The first use cited in the Oxford English Dictionary is from Whitaker's Almanack, 1900 (referring to the 1899 tournament): "In their last match at Cardiff against Wales, Ireland won by a try to nothing, securing the triple crown with three straight victories as in 1894." The Irish victory in 1894 was reported as a Triple Crown by The Irish Times at the time and is possibly the first time the phrase was seen in print.[1]

The phrase Triple Crown is also used in a number of other sports.

Trophy history
Triple Crown Trophies

Until 2006, no actual trophy was awarded to the winner of the Triple Crown, hence it was sometimes referred to as the "invisible cup". Dave Merrington, a retired miner from South Hetton, County Durham, fashioned an aspiring trophy in 1975 from a lump of coal hewn from the Haig Colliery in Cumbria. This has a crown sitting on a four-sided base on which are represented a rose, a shamrock, a thistle and the Prince of Wales feathers. It is kept in the Museum of Rugby at Twickenham.

For the 2006 Six Nations, Barry Hooper, Head of External Communications at the Royal Bank of Scotland (the primary sponsor of the competition) commissioned Edinburgh and London based Hamilton & Inches to design and create a dedicated Triple Crown Trophy. This has been awarded to Triple Crown winning sides since 2006. It has been won four times by Ireland, three times by Wales and three times by England.

Winners

There has been a Triple Crown winner in 66 of the 122 competitions held from 1883 through to 2018. (12 competitions were cancelled due to the two World Wars.)

Only two teams have achieved the Triple Crown in four consecutive years: Wales (1976–1979) and England (1995–1998). No other teams have won the triple crown more than twice in a row.

Unlike the Grand Slam, the Triple Crown winners are not necessarily the tournament winners, since France or Italy – or even another of the home nations – could outperform them within the Championship as a whole. To date, the Triple Crown winners who failed to win the Championship are Wales in 1977, England in 1997, 1998, 2002 and 2014, and Ireland in 2004, 2006 and 2007. The champions were France on each occasion, apart from 2014 when Ireland were champions, the first instance of a team winning the Triple Crown but losing the overall title to another team eligible for it.

Triple Crown winners who succeeded only in sharing the Championship were England in 1954 (lost to France, shared the title with France and Wales) and 1960 (drew with France and shared the title with them), and Wales in 1988 (lost to France and shared the title with them).

The following table shows the number of Triple Crown wins by each country, and the years in which they were achieved.

 England 26 1883, 1884, 1892, 1913, 1914, 1921, 1923, 1924, 1928, 1934, 1937, 1954, 1957, 1960, 1980, 1991, 1992, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 2002, 2003, 2014, 2016, 2020
 Wales 21 1893, 1900, 1902, 1905, 1908, 1909, 1911, 1950, 1952, 1965, 1969, 1971, 1976, 1977, 1978, 1979, 1988, 2005, 2008, 2012, 2019
 Ireland 11 1894, 1899, 1948, 1949, 1982, 1985, 2004, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2018
 Scotland 10 1891, 1895, 1901, 1903, 1907, 1925, 1933, 1938, 1984, 1990

The following table shows Triple Crown winners chronologically.

YearTeamNotes
Home Nations Championship
1883 England[lower-alpha 1]
1884 England[lower-alpha 1]
1891 Scotland[lower-alpha 1]
1892 England[lower-alpha 1]
1893 Wales[lower-alpha 1]
1894 Ireland[lower-alpha 1]
1895 Scotland[lower-alpha 1]
1899 Ireland[lower-alpha 1]
1900 Wales[lower-alpha 1]
1901 Scotland[lower-alpha 1]
1902 Wales[lower-alpha 1]
1903 Scotland[lower-alpha 1]
1905 Wales[lower-alpha 1]
1907 Scotland[lower-alpha 1]
1908 Wales[lower-alpha 1]
1909 Wales[lower-alpha 1]
Five Nations Championship
1911 Wales[lower-alpha 2]
1913 England[lower-alpha 2]
1914 England[lower-alpha 2]
1915–19 Not held due to World War I
1921 England[lower-alpha 2]
1923 England[lower-alpha 2]
1924 England[lower-alpha 2]
1925 Scotland[lower-alpha 2]
1928 England[lower-alpha 2]
Home Nations Championship
1933 Scotland[lower-alpha 1]
1934 England[lower-alpha 1]
1937 England[lower-alpha 1]
1938 Scotland[lower-alpha 1]
1940–46 Not held due to World War II
Five Nations Championship
1948 Ireland[lower-alpha 2]
1949 Ireland[lower-alpha 1]
1950 Wales[lower-alpha 2]
1952 Wales[lower-alpha 2]
1954 England[lower-alpha 3]
1957 England[lower-alpha 2]
1960 England[lower-alpha 3]
1965 Wales[lower-alpha 1]
1969 Wales[lower-alpha 1]
1971 Wales[lower-alpha 2]
1976 Wales[lower-alpha 2]
1977 Wales[lower-alpha 4]
1978 Wales[lower-alpha 2]
1979 Wales[lower-alpha 1]
1980 England[lower-alpha 2]
1982 Ireland[lower-alpha 1]
1984 Scotland[lower-alpha 2]
1985 Ireland[lower-alpha 1]
1988 Wales[lower-alpha 3]
1990 Scotland[lower-alpha 2]
1991 England[lower-alpha 2]
1992 England[lower-alpha 2]
1995 England[lower-alpha 2]
1996 England[lower-alpha 1]
1997 England[lower-alpha 4]
1998 England[lower-alpha 4]
Six Nations Championship
2002 England[lower-alpha 4]
2003 England[lower-alpha 2]
2004 Ireland[lower-alpha 4]
2005 Wales[lower-alpha 2]
2006 Ireland[lower-alpha 5]
2007 Ireland[lower-alpha 5]
2008 Wales[lower-alpha 2]
2009 Ireland[lower-alpha 2]
2012 Wales[lower-alpha 2]
2014 England[lower-alpha 6]
2016 England[lower-alpha 2]
2018 Ireland[lower-alpha 2]
2019 Wales[lower-alpha 2]
2020 England
  1. Won the Championship outright that year with the Triple Crown.
  2. Won the Grand Slam that year with the Triple Crown.
  3. Shared the Championship that year despite winning the Triple Crown.
  4. France won the Grand Slam that year.
  5. France won the Championship that year.
  6. Ireland won the Championship that year.

See also

Notes and references
  1. Torpey, Michael (March 2010). "First Triple Crown win". The Clare Champion. Retrieved 25 February 2013.
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