On a 1970s Penguins tour of the Soviet Union, a destination too risky for England, where hotel rooms were bugged and receptions frosty, one man made a swift trade selling jeans to KGB agents. Maurice Colclough was unique, as memorable off the pitch, as he was on it.

In 1990, Debs, Sue, Mary and Alice decided that women should have their own Rugby World Cup. Against impossible odds, they delivered it in ten months. Netflix will tell you that dramatising rugby isn’t easy. Turns out they just chose the wrong story.

One game, two tries, but Joe Cokanasiga’s World Cup ended there. In truth, it ended the moment he got off the plane. His biggest challenge would then begin: surgery, rehab, piling on the pounds, playing, then injured again. At this point, he was done with rugby.

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.

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.

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. 

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. 

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.