Once again, I'd like to that nrl.com for having the data in a really easy-to-read format.
For this game, the link is here - https://www.nrl.com/draw/rugby-league-world-cup/2022/round-3/england-v-greece/
There were 64 scoring moments for England.
When did England score?
There are a couple of minutes where there are a higher concentration of points. They are at 5, 12, 23-26, 39, 49, 62, 66-67, 74, 76 and 79 minutes.
Who scored for England?
17 different players have scored for England. The only England players who haven't scored are Michael McIlorum, Mikolaj Oledzki, John Bateman (!), Chris Hill, Mike Cooper, Morgan Knowles and Sam Tomkins of all people. What's going on there then?
England point scoring moments by time and player:
Number of England point-scoring moments players were on the pitch for:
Dominic Young and George Williams were on the pitch for every England scoring moment (all 64). Oledzki was on for the least of any English players (6).
If we look at the players who were on the same time with each other when points were scored, looking at both the matrix and the network diagrams, Oledzki has played himself out. He is the player with the least interactions in the matrix diagram and the only England player not present on the network diagram.
From the matrix, you can see a clear core (Young, Williams, Welsby), with two groups of possible teammates.
The lower group of teammates are slightly darker, suggesting more frequently co-occurring when England score.
If Wane goes with that, it's a team of Young, Williams, Welsby, Sneyd, Tom Burgess, Tommy Makinson, Ryan Hall, Andy Ackers, Joe Batchelor, Kai Pearce-Paul, Morgan Knowles, Chris Hill and John Bateman as your starting 13. Which is ... not a terrible idea.
It's obviously skewed by the sheer number of points England scored against Greece, a game Sam Tomkins missed, but I suspect that 13, with Tomkins instead of Makinson, Radley instead of Hill (providing he doesn't have an elbow injury) and Elliot Whitehead instead of Joe Batchelor might be the starting 13 for the quarterfinal.
If we look at the points England conceded:
I still cannot reconcile myself to the French game having been tighter than the Samoa game for England. It makes no sense.
The Greek game put paid to my theory that England concede more in the 30-40th minute.
As to who is on the pitch when England concede:
It's slightly unfair because Williams and Young were on for more than anyone else because they played 80 minutes in all 3 games.
The interesting and unexpected is that Chris Hill wasn't on the pitch for any concession of points, the only player where that is the case. Partly, I suspect it's because he's only played limited minutes, but it suggests there's life in the old dog yet.
I think England only conceding 9 point-scoring moments is skewing this, just because most were in the France match so the players from that match are strongly highlighted.
After the second game,
when do England score their points?
The points are reasonably spread through time - the most interesting thing is probably that this is two matches in a row where England have scored in the fifth minute, which suggests that Wane's philosophy may well be hit 'em hard, early.
If we look at who scored the points,
Tommy Makinson still tops the scoring-moments chart, even though he didn't play the second game. As a rugby league fan, it feels very odd saying an England game vs France was harder, with fewer scoring opportunities, than a game against Samoa.
Number of point-scoring moments England players have been on the pitch for:
Four players have been on the pitch for all of England's points - Herbie Farnworth, George Williams, Elliott Whitehead and Dominic Young.
Other than enjoying pulling L's tail about George Williams coming up good, one of those four players is not like the others.
Elliott Whitehead is a second rower who has now played two 80 minute matches back to back. Given how much of the noise before the tournament was about his age, I think large meals of humble pie are required for many people.
The network diagram and matrix figures have changed, but I think the major differences reflect the personnel changes between the two matches (Ackers, Oledzki, Bateman, Sneyd and Hall in, Makinson, McMeeken, Knowles, Lees and Cooper out) rather than either set of players being better or worse at creating chances.
I've also now got some more info on when the opposition have scored. It's not as well formed as the scoring information so I'm only going to share one picture at the moment.
The main thing I take away from this is that England concede in the last 10 minutes of the first half.
Now, due to Samoa's implosion, that wasn't a problem against them, and again England had a decent head start against France, but later on in the tournament, that could really come back to bite them in the bum. The teams England are most likely to face in the quarter and semifinals are both momentum teams and a score then will really give them heart and might well give them the extra oomph to score another before halftime.
What Australia might do in that situation ... it's too horrible to contemplate.
The match against Greece is unlikely to provide final proof either way on this one, but if Greece do score in those last 10 minutes of the first half, then I think that'll prove the pattern and demonstrate a really weakness that can be exploited by England's opponents.
This is a follow up to the Six Nations 2021 project. In the summary for that I said, "It would be interesting to see how things like this look in sports with rolling subs (odd that there's a Rugby League World Cup this year that might fill that gap ;) )".
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/
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?
And then same but as percentages:
I'm going to watch how this changes, and, at the end of tournament correct for percentage of games played. At the moment it mostly shows which forwards were being rotated out (about which, more next).
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
Much like the last Olympics, I am not sure if we're giving this the number of the year it should have been in or the number of the year it is in.
Whatever we're calling it, it kicks off tomorrow with what is probably the most interesting match of the group stage, England, the hosts, vs Samoa.
Partly I am just excited to see international rugby league again, but partly this could be a stormer of a match. Or it could be a completely implosion of either side. It's that lovely thrill of the unknown.
Because on paper, Samoa should be excellent, and England are coming in with a few injuries and short at least two players who I think would have been in the starting 13. But rugby is played on pitches not paper, and this is a Samoa team who haven't played together often and ... oooh it could be interesting.
The other rugby league fan at work (a Salford fan for his sins) feels much the same way as I do. It's all very oooooh.
In group B, Australia vs Fiji could be good, if Fiji play like they did last World Cup, or it could be appalling, if they play like they did in their warm-up game (England 50-0 Fiji, Fiji you are better than that.)
In group C, Ireland vs Lebanon is probably the most intriguing match, because Lebanon (coached by Michael Cheika, yes that Michael Cheika) come together nicely for World Cups and Ireland look solid, and neither team have ever lacked heart and effort.
Group D features the other candidate for the potentially most interesting match - Tonga vs Papua New Guinea.
Tonga, lead by the ever-wonderful Kristian Woolf, ex-Saints coach and based in St Helens and training with our academy boys Tonga, vs Papua New Guinea, the national team of the only country on the planet that has rugby league as it's national sport.
The rugby will be beautiful, the score unpredictable.
I've made the usual network diagrams.
Due to the number of New Zealandish, Fijian, Samoan and Australian players that play on the same teams, that part of the diagram is tightly clustered so I've had to tweak the settings to make that part readable.
Everyone else is much more spread out.
The national team closest to the centre, pretty much bang on centre in fact, are the Cook Islands, with Leeds being the club team closest to the centre.
These diagrams would have been posted sooner, but a couple of players had to be replaced at the last minute by some of the teams so I had to make a last minute update. Interestingly, before that, there were no Hull F.C. players, but both replacement players play for Hull. I had thought it odd that there weren't any.
The Penrith Panthers are the club team with the most players present, with 19, followed by Catalan Dragons with 18 (not all playing for France) and South Sydney Rabbitohs with 17.
The community view of the network diagrams is also interesting.
There are 16 teams in this group stage but they fit into just 13 communities. Samoa and New Zealand are 1 community, as are Fiji and Australia and so are England and Ireland. The other teams are their own separate communities.
Certainly I'd expect the winners to come from the Australia/New Zealand/Fiji/Samoa cluster, and even with a team with 13 players making their debut Australia are still strong favourites.
I was hoping to have similar diagrams for the Women's World Cup and the Wheelchair World Cup, which are being held at the same time as one giant festival of rugby league, but unfortunately, most reports don't name the club teams the players play for.
If I can find the information, I will make the diagrams.
There will be no review of the Japanese Grand Prix because it has become obvious that the people running the Japanese Grand Prix do not care about previous Japanese Grand Prix so I don't see why I should.
What could have happened to Pierre Gasly is unforgiveable.
Motorsports will never be completely safe, but that just makes it more important that people who run races reduce risk where possible.
Having a tractor-type truck on track while drivers are racing in poor visibility in rainy conditions that lead to poor ability to control the car is a known danger - https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/formula1/63190448
Jules Bianchi sustained the injuries that killed him at Suzuka in precisely those circumstances.
After the investigation, once that combination of factors was identified, everyone involved with the Japanese Grand Prix and Suzuka circuit said "never again".
I don't think doing the same thing 8 years later counts as never again.
Despite that, I was underwhelmed by the race.
Marc Priestly, on BBC commentary for the weekend, said something that I think explains it. He said that he normally doesn't like the Singapore Grand Prix because nothing happens and he wasn't sure if this year's race was interesting or whether it was just because a lot of nothing happened.
And I think he was right. Very little actually interesting happened, but, boy, was there a lot of not interesting happening.
I did warn you all that it would be a very occasional series. There are also spoilers for the book and for the way various films and adaptations vary from the book.
There are many, many filmed versions of the Three Musketeers, and I will not cover them all.
The Three Musketeers is an interesting beast. Like all of Dumas's work, there's a deep, multifaceted story hiding underneath the action adventure headline. When they make adaptations, they tend to stick to the broad strokes of the action adventure story. Very broadly, most of the time.
That does mean that it's very easy to name the best adaptation of the Three Musketeers.
It's easy because it's the only one that passes both my basic requirements:
1 - None of the Musketeers are presented as an idiot (except you know those moments when they are in the book, D'Artagnan, you hot-headed young fool)
2 - The Cardinal is an antagonist, not a villain.
The Cardinal was very much a foundational character for me. Here we have someone who is doing his level best to defeat our heroes, and our heroes are sworn to beat him back but even they admit he is probably a better ruler than the person they're fighting for. They're only against him because they've promised to fight for the King.
The Cardinal, meanwhile, is a reasonable villain, he only wants what's best for France, and has no time for vendettas. He's not boo-hiss villainy and he doesn't want the crown. He just wants the King to do as he's told.
And in this film I get *that* played by Vincent Price. (He even gets a white cat to stroke sinisterly.)
All that, and excellent swordfights - give me a dancer and I can make a fine fencer out of them - and glorious technicolour and Lana Turner in glorious technicolour ... oh it's marvellous and perfect, and actually elides very little of the plot given when it was made.
A lot of other people like the Michael York/Richard Lester films but for me they fail point 1 - they make Porthos an idiot and I will not stand for this because Porthos is my favourite (please don't tell the others because they are also my favourites).
The Chris O'Donnell version fails on point 2. The Cardinal is a boo hiss villain in it - I know they had Tim Curry and temptation can be hard to resist but he can do more than just boo hiss villainy - *and* they screw up Milady. The idea of a Milady de Winter who voluntarily throws herself off a cliff misses something/everything about the character. It also messes with her death being at the hands of our heroes (or at least due to their decision to hand her over to the Axeman of Lille), and the question of "what does that make them?" It makes them our beloved, damaged broken heroes, but you know, not necessarily nice. I have had the argument in the "Dumas Club" in real life, and well, I am on Aramis's side. Although, I admit I have occasionally had problems and thought "what would the Musketeers do?" and then immediately done the opposite. As a strategy, it works.
The Logan Lerman/Paul WS Anderson version is actually solid for all that it changes a lot, and at least it passes points 1 and 2. It could do with more Porthos (Ray Stevenson as Porthos <3 <3 <3) and I have no idea what to do with a version of Athos who gets over himself (I love you really, Athos). It also has Christoph Waltz giving it quietly sinister as Richelieu and Freddie Fox as an adorbs King Louis and I am generally fonder of it than I ought to be.
Similarly changing everything but with enough charm to get away with it is the recent BBC Musketeers, which is very much in name only but I forgive them. There are also two old BBC adaptations which I have not seen but would dearly love to, one with Roger Delgado as Athos, and one with Jeremy Brett as D'Artagnan and Brian Blessed as Porthos (which my mother has raved about for my entire life, but may have suffered from the BBC wiping it).
If you want something a little different I recommend Dogtanian and the Muskehounds.
(I, like many of my generation, can sing this song word for word without excessive thought) (If you would like to hear it in a variety of languages, please see here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6XQGZ_1sjjI)
Now Dogtanian does one weird thing, which is switch Athos and Porthos's characters, but none of the Musketeers are idiots and while the Cardinal is mean, he doesn't want to be king.
Special note, I mean the TV show not the recent film version of this. I'm not sure why the film just didn't work for me while the TV show did but it didn't.
Avoid at all costs:
The Musketeer - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0246544/
Which is the third worst film I have ever seen.
I don't know how you make the Musketeers boring and tedious, but somehow this film manages it.
Rochefort is now mysteriously called Febre, and it Tim Roth giving it villainy (which he can do, but it just doesn't work in this film). It also has Stephen Rea as Richelieu and somehow doesn't use that to it's own advantage.
Then again, it's also a version of the Musketeers where Athos only appears in one scene and we never see the Three Inseparables together.
It's terrible and I disrecommend it utterly.
Now for something completely different:
I finish with something only partly related to the Three Musketeers, but it's thing of marvel and wonder.
Philippe Candeloro does proper fencing footwork on ice skates!!!
No, you need to understand - the number of actors in normal shoes who don't do proper footwork and he's doing it on ice skates.
Technically accurate footwork on ice skates!!!
(It is also my second favourite men's programme ever. The only thing that beats it is Yagudin's Winter short programme [although Yagudin's Man in the Iron Mask is not bad either.])
In 2019, when I found out that Warwick Castle was within walking distance of Warwick train station, I couldn't help but go.
Unfortunately I wasn't co-ordinated enough to get the times right for jousting or the falconry displays, but that just gives me something to do next time.
First I did the maze
, which was Horrible Histories themed and, given it was for kiddies, remarkably easy to get lost in.
Then I walked past the water wheel, although that whole area was very pretty.
Because the castle is set it large grounds, there's a lot of wildlife - squirrels, ducks, insects I can't name but if anyone has any ideas I am willing to listen ...
Also, peacocks, lots of peacocks, who will steal your burgers if you give them half a chance.
One of the more interesting things I learnt that day, this is what the back of a peacock looks like when it's displaying
The same peacock from the front
They've shored up the walls so you can do a whole wall walk, which I definitely recommend because you get some excellent views of the castle. I shan't spoil the history you hear because it's very interesting.
Also, there's a trebuchet.
Part of the reason I missed the falconry was that my slot in the Chamber of Horrors happened to clash with it. Chamber of Horrors was lots of fun and screaming, and some theatre-types given gainful employment horrifying us.
I did manage to catch the end of the falconry display, followed by one of the birds going AWOL and landing in the tree above me. I did ask the handler what you did in those situations - the answer is you wait because they will get bored. Attitude of handler very much "Mum waiting for teenager who has stayed out beyond agreed time".
I had a whale of a time, the only downside being that, amongst all the things they were selling (mostly aimed at small children who enjoy playing with swords and bows and arrows ... so me), there wasn't a guidebook or history of the castle. If anyone can recommend a good history of Warwick Castle, I'd be grateful.
I haven't had chance to go back yet, but I definitely want to. I might not choose a Monday because the rest of the town centre was mostly shut and there were several interesting looking shops I wanted to go into.
I actually have very little to add beyond that, although I do believe Christian Horner's theory that the reason for the improvement was Ferrari turning their engines up, especially when Sam Bird on BBC radio commentary said that they'd done something similar when he'd driven for them at Monza, because Monza matters.
That desire to win might explain some of Ferrari's choices last weekend.
I can't really blame them for their choices - because given their historical pitstop issues, would you trust it to go smoothly? If that safety car had stayed out even one lap longer, we'd be in a completely different position and everyone would be talking about how brave and brilliant the Ferrari strategy team were. I'd rather them make those sorts of decisions than just be passive, so I'm not going to complain when they don't quite come off.
I say this, mind you, not having been able to watch any of it. My mother, who hates F1, mysteriously managed to have family over for the entire race duration. This may have been for the best.
There was the good (ish) news - Max Verstappen was starting from the back.
Unfortunately, so were Leclerc, Ocon, Norris, Zhou, Mick Schumacher and Tsunoda, so there was every chance that Verstappen wouldn't start last.
And then ...
P9 in Lap 1 then tear off in the brakes that causes front right brake overheating, have to stop to take off the tear off off the brakes, come back to P5, took a 5 seconds penalty for being too quick in pit lane because of a burnt sensor caused by the first issue. Beautiful day! pic.twitter.com/8TbcsiqzEt
Which makes Sainz jnr not being able to hold off Verstappen seem like merely a not-good day instead.
I have added an extra dab in "FIA can't save you now" because yes, Leclerc sped in the pitlane but there was a good excuse this time.
I am filing "tear off in the brakes" under "actual spanner in the works".
I am also putting a dab in "Leclerc is making that noise, let's not do that again" for that tweet. That is an unhealthy level of irony in one so young.
I can see why they have the Belgian and Dutch Grand Prixs back to back, it's a rare outbreak of reasonableness in F1.
Dutch Grand Prix
Plus points from the Belgian Grand Prix:
1 - A Ferrari on the podium
2 - For once, it is not Ferrari's strategy being mocked.
3 - ....
Ummm, yeah.
3 - 1 fewer than the number of tyres Carlos Sainz jnr needed. Seriously, if you call a driver into the pits, how hard is it to be ready?! With the right number of tyres.
4 - I have no idea how many penalties for unsafe releases and/or pitstop speeding Ferrari have had this year but I have a horrible feeling it is 4.
I just want the team to be competent. I've given up on good - competent is what I want. No driver(s), however good, can mount a challenge for the driver's title without a competent team, and there's no chance of the constructor's title without it either.
