After ending an eight-year wait for a world crown, and then proving their mettle with England A, the country’s golden generation is finally ready for the game’s biggest stage.

With a sidekick called Rebel, she rears up to one hundred calves before training with the three-time champions of England. She scores tries in historic finals, then returns to the farm. This is the double life of Gloucester-Hartpury’s Pip Hendy.

When Sam Matavesi signed up for the Navy at 24, rugby seemed part of his past. But a twist of fate took him from the deck to the world’s biggest rugby stage, reinvented, reunited with his brother, and even sharing the dressing room with Antoine Dupont. In the end, the Navy didn’t end his dream, it made it possible.

Before he donned the white of England, Semesa Rokoduguni wore the green of the Army. From Afghanistan to the Premiership, his story is one of service, sacrifice and gratitude, and now, of giving back to the uniform that shaped him.

Eight years after a Parkinson’s diagnosis that could have ended his coaching days, Lieutenant Colonel Tim Osman is still leading from the front, as the UKAF head coach rallies his side for a Remembrance clash with Germany that’s about far more than rugby.

“The four months between my dad dying and my mum passing away were so tough, she became really dependent on the alcohol to the point where she was basically sedentary. You try and intervene, but quite frankly you have to allow them to suffer in their own suffering.”

The 2001 British & Irish Lions were flush with world-class talent: Wilkinson, O’Driscoll, Wood, Johnson, Henson, Howley … and after winning the first Test, the script seemed written for a series win. But, driven by Brumbies, the hosts had other ideas, and at the heart of it was Stephen Larkham.

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.