It was a good plan, it was just that the Rugby League World Cup was delayed for a year.
But it's here now.
Since what I am interested in is whether having rolling substitutes affects the shape of the patterns, I will focus on a single team. I have, for reasons of obvious bias, chosen England.
England's first match was versus Samoa, and I was expecting it to be close and tight. There was always the chance that it was going to be a blow out victory for England against a Samoan team who hadn't had any warm-up games. But I don't think even the most optimistic England fan (or pessimistic Samoan fan) was expecting a score of 60-6 for England (match report here - https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/rugby-league/63271368).
Okay, so that should have given me plenty of data to work with. Shame that the official RLWC site didn't have any stats, nor did the BBC.
Luckily for me, NRL.com did have the info.
For the first game, all the information came from here - https://www.nrl.com/draw/rugby-league-world-cup/2022/round-1/england-v-toa-samoa/
When do England score?
The points come in waves, basically at 20 minutes, 45 and then 60-80 when Samoa ran out of energy, players because three of them had either broken bones, dislocated hips or injured ligaments I've never even heard of and were a man down due to Anthony Milford being sin-binned for a late tackle.
Who scores for England? 
Tommy Makinson, so England can join Saints fans in the traditional pastime of hoping he doesn't get injured.
Who was on the pitch when England scored?
Network diagram and matrix diagram of which players were on the pitch together when England scored 
After 1 game, the network diagram doesn't tell us much, but the matrix diagram interests me.
Okay, so forwards play together less than the backs, that's expected - forward are the players you sub on and off to keep them fresh.
What I didn't expect was the pattern:
Morgan Knowles (LF, SR) and Matty Lees (Prop) played together infrequently, which is odd since they play different positions.
Matty Lees (Prop) and Chris Hill (Prop) not playing together makes more sense because they're both props.
Michael McIlorum (hooker) and Chris Hill (Prop) and Tom Burgess (Prop) not playing together is odd, because, again, not the same position
Mike Cooper (Prop, LF) and Chris Hill (Prop) and Thomas Burgess (Prop) and
Chris Hill (Prop) and Tom Burgess (Prop) not playing together, again, makes sense because they'd be prop for prop replacements.
The two "proper" forwards that played the full 80 minutes were Mike McMeeken (second row) and Elliot Whitehead (also second row). It's both interesting, given the pre-tournament chat about Whitehead's age, and not surprising because McMeeken is the second most underrated player in Super League.
The thing that strikes me is that there was a period of the game, when McIlorum was off the pitch, when there was no recognised hooker on the pitch. In fact, had anything happened to McIlorum, there was no other recognised hooker in the matchday squad - Shaun Wane has only picked two of them, McIlorum and Andy Ackers.
Now I'm sure that someone, probably Victor Radley, could have deputised but it's a risky tack to take.
Obviously, I'll keep updating these as the tournament carries on. I'm also going to look at who is on the pitch when England concede. However, at the moment, it's an uninformative set of information.
The R project is here https://github.com/fulltimesportsfan/RLWC2021/blob/a49975981f6054b70a48b7b265a86b5a6d599d61/Rugby%20League%20World%20Cup%202021%20Summary.R
I've fixed all the random movies and casts. I think it's given me a better idea of how the code works.
Json file if you want to do cooler things with it is here - https://github.com/fulltimesportsfan/RLWC2021/blob/35effbc084c65f3383e420f02ccfaf81524ac1b1/England1stgame.json
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