Hat-tricks are more likely to occur in the pool stages, where higher ranked teams, such as New Zealand, who have scored fourteen World Cup hat-tricks, face lower ranked opposition, such as Namibia, who have conceded hat-tricks on ten occasions. There have only been seven hat-tricks in the World Cup knockout stages: Chester Williams and Jonah Lomu in 1995,[6][7] de Beer in 1999,[5] Wilkinson in 2003,[8]Julian Savea and Adam Ashley-Cooper in 2015[9][10] and Will Jordan in 2023.
Six players have scored two World Cup hat-tricks, Savea being the only one to have scored both in the same tournament.[9] Of the six teams in the Six Nations and four in the Rugby Championship teams, only Italy have failed to score a hat-trick at the World Cup. Fiji, Namibia and Samoa are the only other teams to score a hat-trick, which were scored by Vereniki Goneva, Kotze and Alesana Tuilagi, respectively. Goneva and Kotze's hat-tricks are the only time players on opposing teams have accomplished this feat in the same match at the 2011 Rugby World Cup.[1][11]
Hat-tricks
Unless noted otherwise, the players listed below scored a hat-trick of tries.