Rugby League World Cup 2021 - Men's Semifinal Network Visualisation

I may have to apologise to my downstairs neighbour after the shrieking I did during the New Zealand vs Fiji game. 

I wasn't much better during Samoa vs Tonga. 

Tonga's defeat means that none of my beloved group D are left in the competition, and leaves the network diagram looking like this:  

The club teams with the most representatives left are the Penrith Panthers with 12 players, followed by 8 for the Sydney Roosters and 7 for Canberra Raiders. 

The club team closest to the centre of the diagram is St George Illawarra. 

The national team closest to the centre are Samoa, just about, although no team is really all that close to the centre because three of the teams (Australia, New Zealand and Samoa) are close together, while England stick out. 

That makes sense because the money in rugby league is centred around the NRL in Australia. 24 out of 24 Australia and New Zealand players and 22 out of 24 Samoa players play in the NRL, as do 6 of the England team. 

The community view now looks like this:  

Interestingly, although there are only 4 teams left, there are 7 communities in this view, one for each team left, then one for Canterbury-Bankstown Bulldogs, the Brisbane Broncos and one for the Sydney Roosters. 

The first semifinal is England versus Samoa which was also the opening match, but this Samoa team does not feel like the same Samoan team that lost quite so badly. There's a general theory that the lack of warm up games was behind Samoa's awful performance in that game, which could be true, they've improved in every game since. 

But it's not like England have wilted since so this could be a really good match. (If you hear really high pitched shrieking in the stadium, it may well be me because I'm lucky enough to have tickets) 

The other semifinal is New Zealand's chance to finally come good. But I have the fear that Australia are going to do that thing that Australia do so well and just steam-roller New Zealand. In the match versus Fiji, there were huge gaps in the centre of New Zealand's defence, gaps just the right size for Cameron Munster or James Tedesco to run through. 

But hopefully, there will be two very good games of rugby league to go alongside the wheelchair rugby semifinals.