In the kind of town you’ve driven through a thousand times, Viking chiefs once roamed, a shop-keeping British & Irish Lion was raised, Russian KGB agents were snubbed and ‘the Wasps’ were given an almighty fright by the rugby kings of Cumbria.

To celebrate the launch of Rugby Towns, a celebration of the rugby and communities telling stories of clubs and the towns in which they’re based across Britain and Ireland, we’ve got a bespoke Canterbury kit including jersey, shorts and socks for a squad of 23 to be won.

In the space of little more than two teenage years, he went from sitting on the bench with Jamie Vardy against Man Utd to making a European rugby debut in Spain, scoring a try, kicking goals, breaking a leg and then losing his crutches to a drunk team doctor. Life has never been dull for Danny Care.

As the officers pounced on the prisoner, the iPhone popped up from between his bum cheeks, right in front of Poppy Cleall. Meanwhile, roughly around the same time, twin sister Bryony, was regaining her rugby mojo in Exeter. Fortunately for both, their stories would soon converge in the far more salubrious surroundings of Twickenham, in the white of England.

It’s been a long eighteen months in the life of Saracens. But after tears, trials and retribution, against Ampthill, things begin to feel normal again. The fans – and Alex Goode – are back home. Plus, Maro Itoje has visited Doncaster; Lucy Wray has made new Premiership friends; Mark McCall has pitted his wits against the Crusaders; and Jackson Wray has managed to survive a four-children lockdown.

Gareth Davies earned £700 for wearing Patrick boots, Mark Ring hoped for the same, but instead, was handed a ‘Geoff Hunt’ squash racquet. He doesn’t play squash. Something wasn’t right, and he was going to do something about it.

At sixteen he was told he wouldn’t play for Wales. At seventeen he played for Gloucester and trained with England. At eighteen he was called up by Wales and, at nineteen, he scored for them.Now, at twenty, he’s about to become a British & Irish Lion.By 21, Louis Rees-Zammit might just be completely unstoppable.

Six hundred years of liquorice history aren’t likely to be forgotten in a hurry. And rightly so. But in Pontefract they could soon have another history-maker in their midst, a World Cup-winning head coach.

He made his senior debut at seventeen for Huntingdon & District Rugby, and then would make debuts for Cambridge, Nottingham and Randwick before finally making his league entrance for Northampton Saints. Then, before many had even heard of George Furbank, he was playing for England, against France, in the Six Nations. No pressure.

For the final of the King’s Cup, Valladolid came alive with tens of thousands of rugby fans, celebrating their city’s utter dominance of the sport. Spain could not only compete at rugby, but maybe conquer it too. If only they had the chance.

A teammate, seeing yet another journalist waiting to speak to Adam Hastings, ponders aloud if he is “the only player that plays for Glasgow”. Dave Rennie, Warriors’ deadpan coach, wanders past, sipping a mug of piping-hot soup, and offers his own suggestion: “Make sure you kick him in the nuts!”

Amid tales of being among the founding fathers of football, rugby, the Barbarians, the Lions, of having Jack the Ripper as a member, and Dr Watson in the pack, to find out about the modern-day Blackheath, we go in search of a crook-catching Scottish wrestler.

It was pig iron and a man called Jeremiah Homfray that changed the fortunes of Ebbw Vale, transforming it from a sleepy farming community into a European giant of steel employing tens of thousands. Until it wasn’t. Now, the only Steelmen left in the valley can be found at Eugene Cross Park every other Saturday.

Prague suffered more than most during the Second World War. Invaded and occupied by the Nazis, it was bombed by Allied forces in an attempt to release Hitler’s stranglehold. But, as the war drew to a close, the RAF began to drop Red Cross supplies. Amid the medical and food parcels was one unique package of a rugby ball and four distinct black and amber jerseys. In less than a year, the finders had formed a rugby club and, 70 or so years later, the club made a pilgrimage to the original owners of those jerseys: Canterbury RFC.

As the German bombers flew overhead, the Moss Lane anti-aircraft guns burst into action, firing perhaps in hope rather than any certainty of hitting anything in the pitch-black night sky. Once the war was over, the station was dismantled but the weekly battles commenced, and, despite trials and tribulations, in the colours of St Helens RUFC and now Liverpool St Helens Football Club, they haven’t stopped since.

When Berkshire was a lawless place, the picturesque village of Sonning was a hideaway for the infamous outlaw Dick Turpin and his fabled steed Black Bess. Just under 300 years later, Rams RFC are attempting their own form of highway robbery by stealing the National One title from the rugby aristrocrats of Richmond.

Nine miles north of Leeds, just off the A660 to Otley, is an affluent village called Bramhope. Thousands fly overhead every week from Leeds-Bradford airport, heading to or from sunnier climes, rarely thinking what lies beneath. There’s nothing especially remarkable about this place of roughly 4,000 souls. Aside from the rugby that is. Specifically the local ladies rugby team, who have their sights set high, to be among the big guns of the Tyrells Premier 15s.

Southend RFC’s 150th anniversary is testament to many things. The commitment of volunteers down the generations, fiscal responsibility spanning two centuries, plus the resilience to ride out a pandemic or two. But most of all, it underlines that, in Essex, watching a joy-riding lion taking on a vertical ‘wall of death’ at 50mph isn’t as entertaining for the locals as a simple game of rugby.

He was supposed to be the epitome of a Bath man, finishing his rugby days in the club less than a mile from his home. But as he called bingo numbers in a town hall in France, helping an old lady win a telly, Dave Attwood knew things hadn’t quite gone to plan.

When Silvio Berlusconi’s empire finally began to crumble around him in 2011, The Economist magazine ran a headline which captured the zeitgeist. It read: ‘The man who screwed an entire country’. One of the few exceptions to that statement would be rugby in Amatori Milan, which thrived under his patronage in the 1990s. That is, unless he turned up to watch.