The Rugby League Four Nations is an annual rugby league football tournament run in partnership between the Australian Rugby League Commission, Rugby Football League and New Zealand Rugby League representing the top three nations in the sport: Australia, England and New Zealand. The tournament replaced the previous Tri-Nations format by including a fourth nation that qualifies by winning their respective regional competition in a rotation between Europe and the South Pacific. France accepted an invitation to play in the inaugural tournament in 2009. The tournament is sponsored by Gillette and therefore officially known as the Gillette Four Nations. No tournament was contested in 2012 to allow teams to prepare for the 2013 Rugby League World Cup.

Format

The tournament is organised in round-robin format. Each team play the others once, before the top two teams play each other in a tournament final. The top two teams are calculated using a league table. Teams receive:

• 2 points for a win
• 1 point for a draw
• 0 points for a loss

For and against then separates teams on equal points.

Qualification

In 2009 a qualifying tournament was held, the Pacific Cup, involving Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Tonga, Fiji and the Cook Islands. The winners, Papua New Guinea, qualified for the 2010 Four Nations. Likewise in 2010, the European Nations Cup decided the fourth participant in the 2011 tournament, Wales.

Year	Competition	Qualifier
2009	2005 European Nations Cup	France
2010	2009 Pacific Cup	Papua New Guinea
2011	2010 European Nations Cup	Wales
2014	2014 Pacific Qualifier	Samoa
2016	2014 European Nations Cup	Scotland

Tournaments

Year	Host nation(s)	Winner	Score	Runner-Up	Fourth Nation
2009	England/  France	Australia	46 – 16	England	France
2010	Australia/  New Zealand	New Zealand	16 – 12	Australia	Papua New Guinea
2011	England/  Wales	Australia	30 – 8	England	Wales
2014	Australia/  New Zealand	New Zealand	22 – 18	Australia	Samoa
2016	England/  Scotland				Scotland

Tournament winners

Rank	Country	Appearances	Wins	Losses
1	Australia	4	2 (2011, 2009)	2 (2010, 2014)
2	New Zealand	2	2 (2010, 2014)	0
3	England	2	0	2 (2011, 2009)

Statistics

(as of 18 November 2014)

Overall Four Nations Tournament Try-Scorers

Top pointscorers

Overall Four Nations Tournament Top Point-Scorers
	Player	Team	T	G	FG	Pts
1	Johnathan Thurston	Australia	4	39	0	94
2	Cameron Smith	Australia	4	26	0	68
3	Benji Marshall	New Zealand	2	25	0	58
4	Jason Nightingale	New Zealand	11	0	0	44
5	Kevin Sinfield	England	1	19	0	42
6	Greg Inglis	Australia	10	0	0	40
7	Brett Morris	Australia	9	0	0	36
8	Bryson Goodwin	New Zealand	2	13	0	34
9	Billy Slater	Australia	8	0	0	32
=	Ryan Hall	England	8	0	0	32
11	Cooper Cronk	Australia	7	0	0	28
12	Sam Tomkins	England	6	0	0	24
=	Sam Perrett	New Zealand	6	0	0	24
=	Junior Sau	New Zealand	6	0	0	24
15	Michael Jennings	Australia	5	0	0	20
=	Lance Hohaia	New Zealand	5	0	0	20

See also

• Rugby League Tri-Nations
• Rugby League World Cup

Rugby league portal

References

• Official website