Rugby Union World Cup 2023 - Round up after the first set of games and a detailed look at England

Because of everything, these posts will be out of order, so no network visualisations yet. 

What are my takeaways from the first round of matches? 

1 - I love the idea behind having a choir sing the anthems. It might be good if the choir, the stadium and the players were all going at the same time though. 

2 - I love both Gordon D'Arcy and whoever the Scottish commentator was for South Africa vs Scotland. I particularly loved when the Scottish commentator after this South African try. Because it was too beautiful to complain about it being scored against your team. 

3 - It was too hot for rugby (and Warren Gatland is a sociopath if he's against water breaks) 

4 - With point 3 as a caveat, France can't defend their left flank, New Zealand have no go forward, the Irish lineout is appallingly bad, Chile are not going to go home wondering "what if", and Argentina are inexplicable. 

5 - So are England. That was the oddest match of rugby I ever saw. I am looking forward to the next wave of games. 

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As a treat for L, I wanted to do something like I did for the England Rugby League team at their World Cup (https://fulltimesportsfan.wordpress.com/2022/11/22/rugby-league-world-cup-2021-semifinal-experience-and-wrap-up-of-the-england-team-data-viz-project/) for the England Rugby Union team. 

 Following the very odd England vs Argentina match, when did England score their points?

Whenever George Ford wanted to    

No really, it was one of the completest examples of "player enforcing his will on the opposition" I ever did see. 

Which is also evident by the "who scored for England and when?" chart. Several other players who were not George Ford were also present for all of England's point-scoring moments. Arise Maro Itoje, Jonny May, Joe Marchant, Freddie Stewart, Elliot Daly and Ben Earl. 

This makes the "England players together when they scored" charts look like this:  (Sorry the X axis names cut off, I can't spend enough time sitting in front of the computer at one go to fix them) Given the circumstances, I feel it cruel to show the "who was on the pitch when England conceded" diagrams because it's players who'd been on the pitch for 77 minutes while being a player down. 

What are my not-entirely-statistical take home notes: 

1 - I don't see how you can bring Owen Farrell into this team, given how good George Ford was. 

2 - That is a nice core of a team England have. 

3 - I am so happy to see Manu Tuilagi having a good game (sorry, I am a Saints fan of Freddie Tuilagi vintage (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freddie_Tuilagi)) 

4 - <3 Courtney Lawes