Stopwatch vs stoppage time: why do rugby and football use different timing systems?

Time-wasting is a familiar irritation across many sports, for both fans and players.

Attempts to tactically wind the clock down can often be seen in the closing stages of football and rugby matches, which can lead to games ending well beyond their scheduled time – with the average minutes added on per game in the Premier League increasing from six minutes 13 seconds in 2016-17 to 10 minutes 26 seconds in 2025-26.

Stoppage time in football and the stopwatch system used in both rugby codes aim to ensure the right amount of time is played, by restoring time at the end of games and pausing the clock respectively.

The loss of tempo in games and timewasting are hot topics in football.

But rather than stop the clock, football has persevered with making incremental changes.

This will really step up next season when a five-second countdown is applied to goal-kicks and throw-ins. These have been a major cause of lost time.

World governing body Fifa wants to see 60 minutes of football from a 90-minute game.

It came closest to that at the 2022 World Cup by adding lots of stoppage time – but even then the average ball-in-play time was 59 minutes and 28 seconds.

In the domestic leagues you do not even get 55 minutes.

The idea of stopping the clock when the ball goes out has been kicked around for a while.

The thinking is that with two halves of 30 minutes and the clock halted when the ball goes out, football would be guaranteed 60 minutes of play.

One concern is that the footprint of a match would theoretically have no fixed end point.

That uncertainty over the length of matches – especially those played in the evening – isn’t good for fans.

Equally, we can’t predict how player behaviour would change. As time lost has no effect, players might even take longer on restarts. And that would impact the tempo more.

Perhaps the biggest issue for supporters at the matches – at least as things stand – would be knowing how long had been played.

Many grounds only have one stadium clock that isn’t visible from all sides – and as you go down the divisions, they are in even shorter supply.

The clock at a rugby union match may significantly underplay the actual duration of the action.

In the autumn, when South Africa wing Cheslin Kolbe booted the ball into the stands to close out victory over Ireland, the Aviva Stadium clock, and the little graphic in the top corner of your television screen, read 82 minutes and 22 seconds.

In reality, with a raft of television match official interventions, cards, replacements and injuries, the action had stretched north of two hours.

However, the match timing is halted for each significant stoppage to allow the right decisions and treatment to be given.

It keeps ticking as players set up for scrums, line-outs or line up kicks at goal, although referees have ‘shot-clock’ time limits that they apply to each of those aspects of the game.

The advantage for the crowd is a clear sense of how much time a chasing team has to overhaul their opponents.

Rugby’s rules mean that full-time is only blown when the final passage of play comes to an end, not automatically as the clock ticks over to 80 minutes.

The clock ‘going into the red’ to show that the next stoppage is the end of the game lends added drama to the finale of a closely fought match.

However, rugby’s authorities also know that the fact that any given fixture can spill over to north of two hours is far from ideal for broadcasters, fans or players.

An emphasis on speeding up stoppages and limited down time was a key part of World Rugby’s Shape of the Game conference in London earlier this year.