Quick update after the second round of group games

A very quick update, because nothing has changed. As some have teams have since swapped out players that were hurt in the first round, I think that if teams had their weakest opponent in the second or third round, they've rested those players to see if they will recover and only replaced them if they haven't.

There will be changes after the third round.

Rugby World Cup 2019 Network Visualisation Up To The End Of The First Round

The following players were replaced after the first round of games:

Samoa: Alamanda Motuga for Afa Amosa
Scotland: Magnus Bradbury and Henry Pyrgos for Hamish Watson and Ali Price
South Africa: Thomas du Toit for Trevor Nyakane
France: Pierre-Louis Barassi and Cedate Gomes Sa for Wesley Fofana and Demba Bamba
Tonga: Latiume Fosita and Fetuli Paea for Kurt Morath and Nafi Tuitavake
Wales: Bradley Davies for Cory Hill

These changes make the figure look like this:

There is one less unattached player, Nafi Tuitavake has no club listed while Fetuli Paea plays for Tasman Mako in the New Zealand Mitre 10 Cup. The unattached players left are Canada and the US (5), Samoa (4), Fiji (3), Georgia (2) and Italy (1).

As nothing has changed with Argentina, Jaguares have the most representatives with 26, followed by Welwitschias (20) and Benetton (16). With regard to Benetton, they already had 16 and I made a mistake in the original calculation. Benetton are alone on 16 because Glasgow lost a player when Ali Price had to withdraw.

Samoa remain closest to the centre and London Irish are still the club team closest.

Looking at the total numbers of all players named in the squads up to the end of the first round, that diagram now looks like this.

The following teams have named replacements since the original squads were announced: Samoa, Scotland and France (2), NZ, Canada, Fiji, South Africa and Wales (1).  Like the 2015 World Cup, Samoa and one of the teams in the group with them have added the most players (so far). Not sure if France have just been unlucky.

In this diagram, Samoa are the closest to the centre (just, it's very close with Fiji) and London Irish are the club team closest to the centre.

Rugby World Cup 2019 Network Visualisation

(This is late because I spent most of the build-up to the World Cup on holiday. I would recommend a visit to Andalusia to anyone and everyone.)

For the Rugby World Cup, you're going to get more images than usual in this kind of post. This is because the governing body, World Rugby, demand that the squads are finalised before the final warm up match (no, I have no idea why).  In a sport like rugby, it's very easy for people to get injured in a match, so there are often changes between the squad being finalised and the start of the tournament.

Below is the original squads, in red and white in honour of Japan.

The labelled version is here:

As you can see, Samoa are the team closest to the centre, with London Irish being the club team closest to the middle.

Jaguares are the club with the most representatives (26), followed by Welwitschias (20) and Glasgow Warriors (16).

Because of the regional way rugby union works in several countries (New Zealand, Ireland, Australia, Wales) pick all their players from very few teams (4 for Ireland, 5 for New Zealand).

Ireland are the team floating on their own. In the men's football equivalent of this diagram, being so isolated is a predictor of poor performance but I don't think this will be in the rugby (this was written before Japan Vs Ireland, possibly it is more prophetic than I thought.)

The number of unattached players is higher than football. USA and Canada have the most with 5, but several other teams also have unattached players (Samoa, Fiji, Georgia, Italy and Tonga).

All 20 teams are their own communities.

However, as I said players get injured and several teams had to replace players before the start of the tournament. The diagram on the first day of the World Cup (20th September), looked like this.

The main difference is that Namibia have moved further in because they have a player (Janco Venter) who plays for Jersey Reds, and Lee Roy Atalifo, who was a replacement for Fiji also plays for them. 

This means that Fiji are now the team closest to the centre, while London Irish are still the club team closest to the centre. The clubs with the most players hasn't changed.

Rugby union also does something interesting with regard to replacing injured players. In international football tournaments, teams may only replace injured players until their first game. In the rugby union world cup, teams may replace injured players throughout. I think this is because players are more likely to get injured in rugby and because there are certain positions where you need a specialist player. These positions tend to be the front row (Hooker and Props). If a team cannot field a recognised hooker and props, scrums become uncontested for safety reasons. Backs are more interchangeable and, theoretically you can play a non-scrum half at Scrum Half, it just might not end well. (I mock with love, and no one can say that Mauro Bergamasco didn’t give it his all, because he is lovely beyond words).

With the changes that have come after the first round and will undoubtedly come after the second round, I will make more diagrams. I am also very tempted to find a way of making an animation of the changes and then do the same for a diagram of all the players who have been named in the squads. For the time being, below are all of the plays that have been named in any of the squads from the naming of the squads to the start of the tournament.

At the 2015 World Cup, Wales and Samoa went through the most players and I suggested that reflected something about the way the two teams played. This time, New Zealand, Canada, Samoa and Fiji have already had to add players, 1 each.

More soon.

Film Locations

Yes, this was supposed to be done at the start of August but everything this year is late. It covers all films mentioned on the blog up to March 2nd 2016.

All the real locations in those films:

UK and US located films make up more than half of the films, although the exact percentages have gone down since the last time.

Including fictional locations:

This trend of fewer films set in the US/UK or more films set elsewhere also occurs if you take fictional locations into account. Last time US and the UK locations made up more than half of those as well, but it's now the US, UK and France make up half of locations.

It would be interesting to see if the locations change over time as more films need multiple production companies and those sometimes require non-US/non-UK locations as part of the agreement for funding. Not sure how I'd measure that since obviously the films I watch are a very small microcosm of all films.

UK film locations:
 

Are still all England and Scotland and mostly England.

There will be a delay to the Rugby World Cup Network Visualisation

Because I am going on holiday the day after the squads are announced, and will not be back for at least a week.  Sorry about that!

Terracotta Warriors

In October, I took advantage of going home anyway to visit the Terracotta Warriors exhibition at Liverpool Museum (which is now called the World Museum for reasons I do not understand. I mean the one next to the Walker Art Gallery).

It was really good. They did a really good job of setting the Qin Emperor in context, admittedly, tidied up for international consumption, but still context, and why he was so important. And why he was the sort of person who was buried with 8000 odd terracotta soldiers. (I feel I need to add that we were encouraged to take photos, provided we had flashes turned off. If they'd told me earlier I would have brought my camera, but instead I had to use my phone.)

On to the stars of the show.
 


These horses are up to something

The warriors themselves come in a variety of different poses, to represent different parts of the Emperor's army.
There are figures of infantry generals -

Lower ranking infantry officers -

And plain infantry men -

As you can see in the background, the warriors were originally painted, and had glorious uniforms. 

Outside the exhibition, there was an example of what they think the General's looked like in full colour.

This one is a chariot warrior, minus his spear -

Chariot driver -

A kneeling archer -

and a standing archer -

Probably my favourite not-actually-an-artefact was the "how the warriors were made" diorama that ran along the wall opposite where the individual warriors were placed. It was very stylised but I did like the foreman figure going "argh! You've dropped one of the heads!!!" Which was remarkably clear given they were stylised blank-featured figures.

There were also really interesting artefacts from the grave of a later emperor. I promise that once I've found the exhibition guide book, I will update this with the name of the Emperor in question.

 
Some of these had movable arms, but they were made of wood and therefore lost to history  

Also, a menagerie -
 

There was a very interesting bit that dealt with how little we know about the history of the time. For instance; it wasn't clear whether this Emperor had smaller grave goods because he wasn't as powerful as the First Emperor, or because by then fashion and faith had changed so you didn't need life-sized grave figures. 

I was lucky enough to visit after the Golden Horse of Maoling was put on show.

The Horse was the last major exhibit of the exhibition, and led into the last room. I shall leave that as a mystery, in case a similar exhibition is put on near anyone else and they get the chance to go.

The three big trailers from Comic Con do not spark joy

The two of the three big trailers from Comic Con have left me underwhelmed. I was worried that I was being impossible or nostalgia was blinding me, because the one I quite enjoyed is the one where I don't know anything about the source material but I don't think that's the case. Let's start with that one I enjoyed. The Witcher looks like perfectly servicable nonsense. And let's be honest, they had me at "people with swords". I am a simple creature. Cats does not look like perfectly servicable nonsense. I did wonder whether I felt that way because it didn't live up to my expectations but no, I think even a completely disinterested observer would go, "nah, that looks terrible." It looks like someone has spent a lot of money on SFX that are not up to the job.* I know that the only way we will ever get SFX that are up to the job is through failures like this, but I'd much rather they'd fail on something I am not fond of. Because I am fond of Cats. I went to see it for a birthday party when I was little, and will still happily belt out random bits of songs for no good reason. As someone who does like it, this looks godawful. None of the characters look right and I do not even want to know WTF they have done to my beloved magical Mr. Mistoffelees. He is supposed to look magical and mysterious, not like Charlie Chaplin Cat! I am sure Ian McKellen and Dame Judi Dench will be having all the fun in their roles so it does at least have that going for it. I am somehow even less impressed by the new Watchmen trailer than I am by the Cats trailer. It's not like Watchmen is my favourite Alan Moore comic. Promethea is (yes, I know). But I have long since given up on ever getting any film or TV version of Promethea (mostly because of the yes, I know). But there is already an Alan Moore comic about a violent police state with people running around in masks. It's called V for Vendetta. But I can imagine it is hard to raise funds for a TV show where a fascist is brought to power with help from the religious right, and then puts people in cages. Obvs. too far-fetched (and yes, I know it's set in the UK). Either which way, I have no interest in watching Damon Lindelhof's dark future AU fic of the Watchmen! Mostly OCs with a few canon characters appearing. Not least of all because he suffers from JJ Abrams problem of "dude, I have seen the same films as you, that is not anything new!" For instance, I suspect we're supposed to be shocked, shocked I tell you that FBI lady is Laurie when we find out somewhere in episode 13-17. If they do decide to give him any depth, Jeremy Irons will knock (possibly spoilery character) out of the park. Plus, he gets to practise his German again. I am intrigued, just a little, by how they will handle (spoilery character) because, yeah, I had problems with how the film did him. I have no idea if that's because I read the character differently to everyone else, or because the film decided to simplify his character, which ruined a lot of the glorious ambiguity of (spoiler) but either which way, (spoiler) is the only thing that interests me about it. I would prefer to be thrilled by Comic Con trailers!

* There is a reason why everyone is posting that image from What We Do In The Shadows.

Women's World Cup 2019 Final

Normally, here's where I'd talk about which club team(s) are guaranteed to have a player on the winning team, but in this Women's World Cup final, there isn't one. No club teams link both national teams. I don't know if this is because women's football strongest leagues haven't calcified as much as the men's have, or if it's because the teams are from different continents.

North Carolina Courage, Chicago Red Stars, Portland Thorns, Arsenal and Ajax all have 4 players in the final, the most of any club teams. I've chosen to post the version of the diagram coloured to show number of connections to highlight those 5 teams. They're the bright blue ones.  

No community view this time because it provides no extra information in this situation.

Women's World Cup Semifinals

The semifinal diagram is here.

The diagram definitely shows the advantage of using the blue and red spectrum colouring, it is much easier to see which are the biggest teams, and to see gradations of shade.

The national team closest to the centre is England, while the Huston Dash are the club team closes to the centre. The US is linked to others by Jodie Taylor who plays for Reign FC. The three other national teams form a pretty solid triangle.

Through this link to Jodie Taylor, Reign FC are one of the teams who will have someone in the final, no matter what the semifinal results are. The other two are Bayern Munich and Montpellier.

The club with the most players left is Manchester City with 8, followed by Chelsea with 7 and Arsenal with 6. I don't know if this reflects the spending power of the Women's Super League now that most clubs are attached to Premier League clubs, or if it's pure chance.

Going to the community view, there are 4 teams left but 6 communities.

Lyon and Wolfsburg, the two "extra" communities, link two national teams teams, with one player from each team, other clubs that are joining two teams have been put into the community of the nation who supplies the most players.

Of course none of this answers the most important question - who do I support when England play the US? The Lionesses or Megan Rapinoe's team?!

Women's World Cup Quarterfinals

We are now down to the last 8 teams, and I swear the schedule for the Women's World Cup is shorter than the men's because we've barely had time to breathe.

I've realised there was a question I meant to ask in the last post and didn't. Does anyone know why so many of the Nigerian team played in the Norwegian league? Are they all following in a player's footsteps (a la the Fijian rugby league players of Rochdale)? Or is it something else?

While the second round results have mostly gone to form (except Japan vs the Netherlands), I am starting to think Brazil enjoy making the Argentine men's team look good at this knock out football thing. How can you be so good and still not win stuff?!

On to the diagrams:
   

The national team closest to the centre is England, and Manchester City are probably the club team closest but it's hard to tell because of the way the teams are spread. The losses of Canada, Australia and Japan mean that the US is pretty much on it's own with a heavy counterweight of European teams.

The club teams with the most players left in are Lyon (11), Bayern (10) and Chelsea (9). Barcelona lost most of its players when Spain lost.

The community view is less interesting because all the countries are their own community. 

There seems to be far less overlap than there normally is in the men's game and I don't know if that's because no "dominant" league has yet established itself. In the men's you'd expect most of the finalists to play in one of the big 5 European leagues (Spain, England, Italy, Germany, France, and you can make the argument it's really a big 2 of Spain and England), but that doesn't seem to be the case here. Yet. Professional leagues still being a relatively recent thing in women's football.