Rugby Union World Cup 2023 - A closer look at England after their fifth game

I am continuing to try to make sense of England's World Cup campaign. It remains inexplicable. 

There is a reason this meme is being used everywhere.  

Who scores for England and when? Point scoring moments per quarter: 

0-20 minutes = 7 

21-40 minutes = 15 

41-60 minutes = 15 

61-80 minutes = 15 (4 of the 15 were in the 80th minute, possibly reflecting that England have been grinding games out.)

Elliot Daly remains the England player on the pitch for the most point-scoring moments for England  

He has been present for 40 out of 52 point scoring moments. 

Where it starts to make no sense is when you look at the players who play together when England score. 

A couple of factors add to the confusion. 

1 - Union has 8 subs on the bench and most of them are used so rather than a match day 15, it's 23. This creates more variation. 

2 - Because rugby takes a lot out of the players, squad rotation is more important. This is especially true when you have lots of games in a relatively short period of time. When one of the teams is noticeably weaker than the others (Chile), that gives you the opportunity to rest players. The large number of point-scoring moments in that game have probably skewed the diagrams. 

3 - Two of the players Steve Borthwick likes to play (Owen Farrell and Billy Vunipola) were banned at the start of the tournament and Tom Curry joined them within 3 minutes. The minute Steve Borthwick could, he has played them, and that, I think has made the diagrams more confused. 

The dendrogram, matrix and network diagram are all mightily confused  

I think George Ford's cluster is so far away from the others because Borthwick doesn't play him and Farrell together.  

The equivalent charts for when England concede aren't any clearer, but one thing does stand out, England concede between minute 20 and minute 30.   

3 of the 4 teams that have scored against them have scored then. 

Which players are present when England concede? Maro Itoje, Joe Marchant and Ben Earl have been present every time England have conceded but that's less on them, and more because they've played a lot of minutes.   

I'd say Manu Tuilagi and Jamie George are probably present for more points concessions than you'd expect from their playing time. 

Dendrogram, Matrix and Network Diagram for when England concede This is being posted after England have announced their team for the semifinal. I was going to feel guilty about that but then realised that the team picked for the semifinal very much matches my assessment that none of this makes any sense.