Getting hit in the face taught Gwennan Hopkins to be patient. Winning a taekwondo world title taught her not to rush things. Weightlifting gold helped power her rugby. And turning down England for Wales? Well, that was just the right thing to do.

A founding member of the SAS; Britain’s most decorated war hero; and described by some as ‘completely mad’. Once, dressed in black tie, he shot a springbok and delivered it to his Presbyterian minister room-mate. As British & Irish Lions tourists go, Blair ‘Paddy’ Mayne might just be the greatest ever.

On the banks of the River Thames, at a school ground fit for a king, two of rugby’s famous names take to the field in a top-of-the-table clash. London Scottish Lions and London Irish Wild Geese in Regional 2 Thames might not have the glamour of matches past, but both could well represent the future.

From a Gareth Edwards jersey sold for £240k and one of Dave Gallaher’s fetching £180k, to a Subbuteo-style tactics board from 1950 and a bespoke picture of a weeping kangaroo, memorabilia linked to the British & Irish Lions can be a big, and intriguing, business. Just don’t call it merchandise.

Montevideo, the capital of Uruguay, is many different things to different people. Famed for art deco buildings, colonial architecture, and wearing its Latin heart on its sleeve, it’s also the best place to get a steak in South America. But the home city of Pablo Lemoine could also become a hotbed of rugby, if only it gets the chance.

Months after Canada’s men’s side failed to make it ten Rugby World Cup appearances in a row, the women’s side put the world champion Black Ferns to the sword. It summed up a tumultuous time for rugby in the country, where you just never know what might happen next.

At thirteen, Londoner Afolabi Fasogbon was introduced to rugby. By the time he reached twenty he was winning West Country derbies and waving goodbye to 68-cap England props. 

Almost three decades after just five nations competed on Australia’s Gold Coast in the first Touch World Cup, England changed the game in Nottingham. Thirty-nine countries, 23 pitches, and thousands of players. ‘Non-contact’ rugby has never looked so good. 

It took 77 seconds for Immanuel Feyi-Waboso to score his first Premiership try, and he’s barely stopped since. He signed for three professional clubs before he was 21, but now, irrespective of where he’s been before and what his birth certificate says, he’s finally home. In Devon. 

The Leeds-born daughter of Hollywood’s ‘Jonah Lomu’, Maddie Feaunati follows in mighty Samoan footsteps, but in a debut year when the world took notice, the best is still to come.

Moving into a house known as the ‘Crack Den’ isn’t where you’d expect to find an aspiring pro rugby player, but after falling out of favour at Leicester Tigers academy, that’s where Jamal Ford-Robinson found himself, battling for National 1 survival at Cambridge. 

The Southern Knights trudged off the field at the Greenyards with the taste of defeat and the knowledge that this was the end, for the third time, of a professional side in the Borders. With the same old problems rearing their heads, Scotland’s rugby heartlands are once again staring into the unknown. 

If you’re lucky, and find yourself in Oxford, the most English of England’s cathedral cities, look to the tree-lined river, and you might catch a glimpse of a rugby superhero deftly punting her way through the waters. Maud Muir is a prop of many talents.

It was just a simple two-on-one. A try now, with the clock in the red, and Great Britain’s core status on the 2025 SVNS series would be secure. But, one misplaced pass later, and their golden chance was gone. Had GB just fumbled their place at sevens’ top table, or even, the future of their programme? 

When you imagine how negotiations to buy a rugby club would go, you might think of secretive boardroom meetings filled with suit-and-tie wearing executives. But in the case of the Sale Sharks takeover in 2016, it all started, at least the first inklings of it, in a New York apartment over a chicken chow mein. 

When Ollie Chessum saw his foot at an angle it wasn’t supposed to be, he thought his dream was over. He knew the long grind of rehab was ahead, but what he didn’t yet know was whether or not he could make it back in time for the World Cup. 

After five promotions in just over a decade, Dings Crusaders looked to have finally found their ceiling, relegated from National 3 at the first time of asking. That was, until they were given a lifeline. As Wakefield folded, the club from the humblest of backgrounds had a second chance, one they weren’t going to let slip. 

After suffering a third ACL tear by the age of 24, Tatyana Heard lost her Red Roses contract and, with it, the job she’d always wanted. As the pandemic hit, instead of representing her country, she was getting up at 3am for another shift at the local Asda.

Just two caps is scant reward for a former choir boy turned ‘New Zealand number six’ who’s been as consistently excellent as Ted Hill. Perhaps he played for the wrong club: Ted never thought so. He’d not been paid for four weeks when his agent persuaded to him face the reality of the situation. He eventually left, hoping that one day there’d be a club to return to...

The champions of England knew little about the Devon fishing town, or what the locals could do on a rugby pitch but, needs must, a game had to be played and, besides, what did they need to worry about? They were Bath, it was Brixham that should be worried.