When Italy’s under-19s visited Argentina more than two decades ago, they gave fifty minutes of game time to a local teenager called Sergio Parisse, who happened to have Italian parents. Fate would then set him on a path to become the greatest Italian player of his generation.

Rocky Clark wasn’t always on the right path. A ‘fat knacker’ in danger of being arrested was instead ‘guilted’ onto a rugby path paved with 137 caps and a World Cup win.

Before they conquered all, Wasps Women worked shifts in the club kitchen just to validate their existence. For forty years they’ve been the great entertainers of the women’s game, until they weren’t. When the men’s side imploded, the impact reverberated from Coventry down the M40, with the women’s team forced to leave the division they once dominated.

Glued to the television, a twelve-year-old Alex Goode didn’t miss a point as he watched Britain capture their first-ever badminton medal at the Olympics. He’d found his sporting hero, who just happened to also be his Aunty Jo. 

He was let go by both Sale and Wasps, and then found himself in the basement of the English second tier, but Mark Atkinson found the road to redemption began at Goldington Road, known for having a Lazarus-like impact on lost rugby souls.

Imprisoned for drink driving; sharing a prison cell with a man who’d tried to burn down a house with his kids inside; fearing that cancer might take him, like it took his mum; former Welsh lock Andy Allen was put on suicide watch. He’d thought about it before, so much had happened, but this time it was a failed fraudster that helped save him.

Losing 148-0 is no way to start a national league rugby career, but Elaine Vassie is made of sterner stuff. A rugby career that began as the result of a crash with an Army Land Rover, has zigzagged its way upward to Dallas, Texas, where she’s now helping to shape a new frontier in American rugby.

She was a pioneer in the Welsh game. A fully professional, female coach of a national side. Rachel Taylor started the job in November but left the following March. A career with Wales that spanned three World Cups shouldn’t have ended like this. And it won’t. Not if the North Walian backrower has her way.

Mark Bingham rang his mum from United Airlines Flight 93. She was a flight attendant and insisted he sit down and not get noticed but, together with other passengers, that wasn’t going to happen. “He was six foot five, he played rugby. He was never going to sit down.”

For his first fourteen years, hospital was a second home for Ayaz Bhuta. Some people, even relatives, said he wasn’t ‘normal’. They were right. Becoming world champion isn’t something ‘normal’ people do. This is the ‘Jonah Lomu of wheelchair rugby’ we’re talking about, a man so special he never has to pay for fried chicken again.

Stafford, Staffordshire. Seemingly unremarkable, with a ‘favourite son’ that penned the seminal works on fishing and another finding fame with Boon and Bob the Builder. It’s had its moments of excitement too, with Viking invasions and civil wars and was branded ‘Little London’ by James I. Now, it has a somewhat lesser-known, but still loved, favourite son back in the fold: Aly Muldowney.

As he addressed the RFU Board for the final time, Geoff Irvine stated, ‘the illegitimate child (the Championship) that was fathered by the RFU is being sent to the orphanage!’. It fell on deaf ears. In two decades at the frontier of English rugby’s top two divisions he’d witnessed fist fights in board rooms, accusations and conspiracy, as the egos of rich men fought for supremacy. But this was the final straw.

At the 2016 Rio Olympics, New Zealand won eighteen medals, the biggest haul in their history and a stark contrast to 2000, when they took just four back across the Tasman. Among those leading the change was a Scottish-born synchronised swimmer called Katie Sadleir, now she’s trying to create even bigger change, in women’s rugby. 

At the end of the game, she could feel the tears in the crowd. The journey had come to an end. Ruby Tui, a girl inspired by her superhero mum, who could so easily have taken so many wrong turns, was on top of the world.

The pain shot like a bolt between his shoulders, unlike anything he’d ever felt. He was out running and looked towards strangers in the park, pondering whether to ask for their help. Deciding against it, Clive Griffiths ran home instead and, hours later, was in the ICU having had a heart attack.

Her father was a pimp and her mother was a prostitute. Aged 18 months old, she was abandoned and raised in care. Education was her way out and she went on to manage a supermodel, Michelin-starred chefs, Peter Gabriel and become the most influential woman in English rugby. ‘Remarkable’ doesn’t begin to do justice to the story of Maria Pedro.

Aged nineteen, Jimmy Gopperth walked into a changing room with Jonah Lomu, Christian Cullen and Tana Umaga. All he had to do, he was told by the All Blacks’ captain, was ‘be loud and push us around the field’. That was the easy bit. What wasn’t so easy, was displacing Dan Carter.

Negotiating with naked head coaches, bartering shares in Cardiff airport, finding dates with pop stars, there’s little rugby agents haven’t had to contend with in the relatively brief era of professionalism. But in an industry where there are just 700 professionals being served by 115 agents, it’s little wonder they’re always willing to go the extra mile.

George Kruis freely admits he was crap at rugby. A late developer, he joined his local club for the beers and barbecues rather than trophies, but ended up winning them by the shedload. Even in Japan, he’s on course for back-to-back titles. But there won’t be one last tilt at a World Cup. Aged 32, he’s finishing. On a high.

On a mountain in Alaska, having seen her Olympic dream come to an end, in her mind Alev Kelter battled everything. She questioned celibacy, her sexuality, her life goals, her purpose. And she found answers. Then, back at the lodge, rugby found her.