redfiona99

The changes are:

Ireland: Jordi Murphy replaced Jack Conan.

Ireland are literally doing it to themselves, as Conan was injured in training.

Canada: Guiseppe du Toit and Theo Sauder replaced Nick Blevins and Ben LeSage.

This change occurred between games 2 and 3 but was only updated on Wikipedia today (6th October). No, I am not sure why they've swapped a centre for a fullback.

Kainoa Lloyd replaced Taylor Paris.

South Africa: Damian Willemse replaced Jesse Kriel, who was injured in the first match. This was what I was meaning when I said I thought teams were waiting to see how bad injuries were before sending players home. This was a swap of a fly half for a centre.

United States: Chance Wenglewski for David Ainu'u. Again, this happened earlier but the Wikipedia article was only just updated.

France: Christopher Tolofua for Peato Mauvaka, and Vincent Rattez for Thomas Ramos - The latter change was a wing for a fullback.

The removal of Canada's link to Castres and Ireland's shift up and to the left may explain the changes in which teams lie closest to the centre. Samoa and Scotland are the national teams closest to the centre, and London Irish and Pau are the club teams closest to the centre. I can't tell which is closer between either pair.

All the teams are in different communities.

If we look at all players named at any point up to the end of the 3rd round of group games, it now looks like this:

France and Canada have used the most players, 35, with Samoa, Scotland, South Africa and Tonga next with 33. Apparently, playing rugby for a country that speaks French is bad for your health.

Labelled, it looks like this

Either Samoa or Fiji are the national team closest to the centre, it's too close to tell. The club team closest to the centre are Pau.

Looking at the community view, France and Fiji now one community for reasons I do not understand.