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

I am not convinced that Steve Borthwick knows what his best team is. L has said you don't need fancy stats to see that, just watch them play, but the visualisations really do back the statement up. 

I think it's clearest in the dendrogram of England players together on the pitch when they score: There's no clusters of players often on the pitch together at the same time, which reflects players not playing together, which means they don't have the chance to gel. 

The diagram of players who scored points for England also shows this (the x-axis is point scoring moments)  You've got the kickers and then no-one else consistently scoring (Arundell's were all in one game).

England point-scoring moments by time and scorer    England still have fewer point-scoring moments in the first 20 minutes than the other quarter chunks.

Elliot Daly has been present for the most point-scoring moments    Elliot Daly being present for the most out of everyone (30/42) is reflected in the equally confused looking matrix and network diagram.  He's the unexpectedly darker line in the pale section.   

At the same point of the Rugby League World Cup, I could guess who would be picked. Here, I've got no chance. 

The concession dendrogram  is a little more clumped, due to fewer events overall and Chile not scoring against England.

The matrix and network diagrams are also clearer. Not that I can explain why Elliot Daly isn't on this one. 

My heart belongs to Fiji anyway (or as one of the ITV team put it "everyone's second favourite team, unless they're playing your first team"), and if Fiji cut out the handling errors, it could be an interesting match.

A Bushel of the Bard - the Histories

As there is a brief pause in the rugby union visualisations, I thought it was a good time for the next in this series.

After the first post in this series, I received complaints about the Merchant of Venice being included in the comedies.  I told L that if he wanted to shout at someone, he should shout at 400 years of classification.  On the other hand, I agree that Merchant of Venice is not funny (most especially not Launcelot Gobbo).  But it does have a wedding.

That sort of historical classification is also why Julius Caesar, play about a famous, real, historical even in Shakespeare's day person is in the tragedies, not in the historicals.

Richard II - You know how you never see the Charlton Heston Ben Hur in the right order?  I have never seen Richard II in the right order.  I have seen the end, beginning and middle of completely different productions, unfortunately in that order.  (Although L took me to see the Wilton diptych, so I see why they go with white and gold for Richard - https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/english-or-french-the-wilton-diptych)

Henry IV (or IVa and Ivb) - In the right order, only ever the Jonathan Firth version (or David Calder version, depending if you describe it by Hal or by Falstaff, Rufus Sewell version if you go by Hotspur.  Mumblety but greater than 25 years later, I still remember the Radio Times picture of Rufus Sewell as Hotspur).  Various liberties are taken with the order of scenes in this version, which even my mother has no objections to.  Them making John the nice Lancaster we all take grievous objection to (they remove the bits where he sneaks mightily and underhandedly).  Them playing up the poisonousness of Hal, my mother objects to also.

On the other hand, David Calder is still my Falstaff, the Falstaff all others will be measured by (and frequently found wanting).  It's the scene with him and Justice Shallow and Paul Eddington and David Calder just knocking that straight out of the park.

Henry V - There's going to be a whole bit about "I don't have a Hamlet problem".  In much the same way, my Mum doesn't have a Henry V problem, she only has 3 versions at home (I have the family copy of the Hollow Crown version, which one day I will watch, properly).

I'm going to go with the obvious, and go with the Branagh version as my favourite, all mud and blood and Non Nobis Domine (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=13FrLGB_oK8).  However, I've yet to see a version where there wasn't something I liked.

I love the surround for the Olivier version, and the BBC version gives me most of Act 3 scene 7 and Julian Glover's Constable.  Even the recent(ish) Globe version with Jamie Parker as Henry V that I otherwise disliked had an adorable "Kiss me Kate", although when the "Kiss me Kate" is the highlight of a version, it says things.

Richard III - Antony Sher, but not like that.  Once again, the Animated Tales has weaved it's spell on me, and he is Tricky Dicky in that one.  It's the artwork and the ghosts, oh the ghosts.  The other version I have watched all the way through, in the right order, is the Laurence Olivier version, which works well and has that moment where Buckingham realises what he's released.

Formula 1 - Japanese Grand Prix 2023

We were right, the Singapore Grand Prix was a one-off and Red Bull business as usual has resumed.  On the other hand, if we ignore Max Verstappen, there was some fun.  Some of it was racing fun, and some of it was chaos fun, and a lot of it was inter-team battles fun, which is always one for the impish.

I can understand some of the team decisions, although the Alpine one confuses me mightily (https://www.autosport.com/f1/news/gasly-doesnt-understand-alpine-order-to-swap-positions-in-japanese-gp/10524780/).

I think we also just have to accept that the second Red Bull seat is cursed.  It's inexplicable.  Perez is so much better than that, much the same way as Webber was better than that.  I did get a small kick out of people going "I didn't know you could do that to avoid a penalty!" mostly because I think I remember Ferrari pulling a similar stunt some time in the mid-90s.  Which is now making me feel old, that kiddie-winks nowadays don't know that the second rule of formula 1 is "time spent finding loopholes in the regulations is never wasted."

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

Following three England games, what do the various charts look like now? 

The "when do England score?" chart now looks like this  

It's not distinct on the chart, but it's interesting that if you split it into 20 minute chunks you get the following pattern: 

Minutes 0-20 = 3 point scoring moments 

21-40 = 13 

41-60 = 11 

61-80 = 10 

England spend the first 20 minutes feeling their opposition out.

Who scored for England?    

In which Steve Borthwick has created himself a problem because yes, Arundell has scored more than the player he replaced, but against Chile who are probably the weakest team in that pool. 

England's point-scoring moments by time and player: That's an interesting number of unconverted tries. 

Because of the number of changes for the England vs Chile game, no England players have been present for all of England's points-scoring moments Elliot Daly has been present for the most, 30 out of the 37 point-scoring moments England have had.

The dendrogram looks like this This should explain who some of the missing names are in the matrix figure that comes next. (I promise I'll tidy them up once my leg is fixed)

The present at the same time matrix now looks like this.    Although at least now they're staggered the way I was expecting so you can put them together quite easily. 

The matrix diagram really shows the number of changes from the other two matches to the Chile match, and that there have been almost two different England teams, linked by Elliot Daly.

It hasn't half messed up the network diagram though.    

I present a very odd looking blob. 

There are no changes to the concession diagrams, because Chile didn't score. It wasn't through lack of trying though, and they have heart and spirit. In the spirit of raising my hat, I present England Rugby's video from Instagram.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by England Rugby (@englandrugby)

Formula 1 2023 - Italian Grand Prix and Singapore Grand Prix

Most of the exclamation marks have been removed, but a few of them are unavoidable.

I told myself not to get excited after the Italian Grand Prix, because everyone knows that Ferrari turn the engines up and damn the consequences at Monza.  It was hard not to get excited though, because, those magnificent beautiful red cars racing each other, even while giving us fans and Frederic Vasseur kittens (I did love the subtle irony he used when saying, "some people have a different concept of 'no risk'" (https://www.formula1.com/en/latest/article.vasseur-says-he-really-appreciated-sainz-and-leclercs-intra-team-tussle-in.r7NX3jKu0wuHaOelgsLZh.html).

But everyone was talking about Ferrari and how exciting they'd been and how nice it was to see racing, and racing within a team.

My team, held up as what F1 should be.  So lovely!!!

After a couple of weeks to calm down (and it was needed) there was the Singapore Grand Prix.  I wasn't expecting anything from it.  Street circuit.  Red Bull.  Tyre degradation is important.  These were not good signs.

Then Verstappen goes out in Q2.  It's Singapore, so it's difficult to overtake, so maybe that takes him out of the equation.

Then the lovely, marvellous, fantastic Carlos Sainz jnr gets the Ferrari on pole, second race in a row and, it's Singapore, and it's difficult to overtake.

I steel myself, it will all go horribly wrong somehow.

And then ... it doesn't.

It very nearly does, but at least this time it wasn't Ferrari that caused the problems for Leclerc's pitstop.

But, and this is the thing that gave me the most joy was that Sainz jnr worked out a solution by himself.  It shows clarity of thinking.  Is he not the most marvellous and wonderful sneaky darling!!!!

I have accepted that the victory is a one-off, for the time being, but I'm seeing things that give me hope.

Rugby World Cup 2023 - Network diagram at the start of the competition

As promised, the network diagrams. 

These were correct as of the start of the tournament. 

Due to the higher number of injuries in rugby than football, I'll do the updated versions after each round (and catch up with round 2 and 3 changes). 

This is what the network diagram looked like at the start of the tournament: The first thing that stands out to me is how much more spread the network diagram is than the equivalent for football. 

This is probably due to several of the rugby unions having policies that say you can't play for the national team if you play abroad (or only once you have some ridiculous number of caps so it is almost the same as saying you can't). 

On the other hand, it's more together than the equivalent diagram from 2019. 

Every player in the New Zealand, France, Ireland and Japan squads plays in their home league, while none of the Tongans do. 

Something else that might throw the diagram slightly is while the football and rugby league World Cups take place in the gaps between seasons (or do normally, 2022 was weird), rugby union takes place once the Northern hemisphere season has already started, so some of the elder statesmen are down as already having moved to their retirement homes teams or are unattached because once their national team are out, they're done. 

That is partly why South Africa and Japan are so close together. 

Most national teams have a couple of club teams where most of their players play (Chile are the most extreme with 27/33 players playing for Selknam, but New Zealand and Ireland's 33 players play for 4-5 club teams), with Namibia, Portugal and Argentina being the exceptions to this. 

Selknam are the club team with the most representatives (27) followed by Penarol with 21 of the 33 Uruguayan team playing for them. Benetton and Moana Pasifika are tied for the third most representatives with 19 but there's are slightly more mixed although heavily Italian, Samoan and Tongan. 

It's a sign of the changes in rugby union that none of the 10 Perpignan players in the World Cup play for France, and all 4 of the Newcastle Falcons players play for Argentina. 

The creation of teams like Fijian Drua and Moana Pasifika have not only probably had a really good effect on the results of Fiji, Tonga and Samoa, but have changed the shape of the network diagram. Moana Pasifika, in particular, links Samoa and Tonga so tightly that in the community view they are one community. That's why there's 20 national teams but only 19 communities. 

Georgia are the national team closest to the centre, with Oyonnax the club team closest to the centre, which might reflect the French top two divisions being a melting pot producing many of the links between teams. 

I think that is why there's the tight cluster of 7 teams (Samoa, Tonga, France, Argentina, Italy, England and Wales) in the centre of the bottom of the diagrams. 

Because of teams like Ireland and New Zealand who only pick players from their own league, and those leagues having fewer foreign players in, the "strength" of being at the centre of the diagram as a predictive factor is less in rugby union, so I shan't be making predictions.

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

(The network diagrams are coming, they're finished, I just need to write the text round them) 

(The post about the Italian Grand Prix and the Singapore Grand Prix is also coming, I just need to take out all the exclamation marks) 

My summary of the Japan vs England game to L was "What England were doing right last week they aren't doing right this week", which I stand by.

Although at least someone not called George Ford has now scored for England   

Here is when England scored points, by time and player

The number of point-scoring moments England players were present for looks like this 

It does look like there's a solid core of Itoje, May, Marchant, Ford, Daly and Earl that are present when England score. 

The dendrogram of which players were on the pitch at the same time when England scored looks like this   

I'm including the dendrogram because, due to the number of England players who have been on the pitch when England scored, the matrix is only showing half the names. Normally when that happens, it's staggered and half go on the x-axis and half go on the y-axis. For whatever mathematical/spatial reason, that hasn't happened this time, and I still can't sit still in one position long enough to add the names in either half. Once leg is healed, I will try and get this done. 

The matrix looks like this:  The network diagram helps identify the players not marked on the matrix diagram: After two games, there isn't yet a pattern of when England concede points   

England's opponents haven't had enough point-scoring moments for there to be a concession network diagram, but the matrix looks like this:  I'm trying to figure out if Joe Marler's line is unexpectedly pale (suggesting he was on the pitch for fewer point concession than those around him) or if it's just a side effect of props not playing 80 minutes anymore.

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. 

~~~~ 

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

Rugby World Cup 2023 - First Post

Today is the first day of the Rugby World Cup 2023, which will hopefully start with a cracker of a France vs New Zealand match.

I had intended to have three sets of posts for this World Cup.

The first was the usual network visualisation using Gephi.

The second was a different, and much speedier way, of visualising the same thing, as described by James Ashford (@jrashf@mastodonapp.uk / https://jrashford.com/) in this post - https://jrashford.com/2023/08/25/using-graph-theory-model-teams-and-players-relations-in-the-world-cup/ 

I've been looking for ages for something that explains how to get data for this sort of thing off Wikipedia easily, and his description is really easy to follow.  The other advantage of that is that it gives me more control of colours and labelling that Gephi has at present (and should solve the chopping off of team names problem).

The third is a present for L, so I'll be a bit mysterious about it till it's ready.

You'll notice "intended" not "have", my plans were already slightly behind due to a holiday, and then I broke my leg.  Don't worry, I'm fine, just very grateful for North of Tyne (https://www.notmrt.org.uk/) and Northumberland National Park (https://nnpmrt.org/) mountain rescue teams for getting me off the hill in question.

It's slightly cramped my computer style so I've fallen behind.  There will still be the three sets of posts, but they will be delayed.

Formula 1 - Belgian Grand Prix 2023

I am aware that the Belgian Grand Prix was some time ago.  I have been busy (it's a very long story).

In keeping with the previous races, I didn't get to see or hear the race, this time because of a Saturday and Sunday museum double header, where I said hello to large dinosaurs (https://www.nhm.ac.uk/visit/exhibitions/titanosaur.html) and large steam engines (https://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/home).

I don't think I missed much with the race, which, you know makes me sad because it's the Belgian Grand Prix.

I did manage to catch the sprint race though, and be thoroughly melodramatic at the inevitable Ferrari oops.

The interesting thing, because Ferrari screwing up again is not interesting, was L's reaction to the sprint race.  L is not a die-hard, he is, at best, a long-suffering dragged-along-by-a-friend.  He's precisely the sort of person the changes to F1 are supposed to be trying to attract, and he ... found it to be pointless.  Completely bored.  Worse than dislike in many ways.

Me not liking the sprints as a cranky old fan is sort of expected, but that's it's completely not registering with the target audience is a sign they need to go back to the drawing board.