Stories of resistance attacks against the Nazis, Soviet showtrials and the hell of war-time Poland filled their heads. They didn’t need to understand every word spoken by their Welsh coach. This was the team talk to end all team talks. Germany never stood a chance.

One evening in the summer
of 2003, Joe Schmidt, deputy principal of Tauranga Boys College, gets a knock on the door. The visitor was to the point: ‘Vern Cotter wants you to be the backs coach of the Bay of Plenty. Are you in?’ Joe was in and, one year later, he’d help the unlikely contenders to one of the most cherished prizes in New Zealand rugby.

Chris Raducanu and Florică Murariu were in the Romanian squad that played Scotland at Murrayfield in December 1989. During the post-match banquet Raducanu fled from the hotel and claimed political asylum. Murariu didn’t. Instead, he took the flight back home and, two weeks later, was shot dead as revolution tore through their homeland.

A mushroom cloud enveloped the city of Beirut on Tuesday 4th August, 2020. Beneath it, was a world destroyed, 200 lives lost, 300,000 left homeless, and then, as the smoke began to clear, two teams of rugby players joined the effort to rebuild.

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.

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.

The tallest nation in the world, whose people fill Springbok halls of fame, are climbing the world rankings. Built on foundations laid by a chicken farmer from Botswana, the Netherlands have rebuilt their pathway and paved it with quality players of orange, including a boy named Wolf.

The Chilean capital of Santiago has recently been at the heart of social unrest, the like of which hasn’t been seen since the military coup of the 1970s. But, amid the turmoil, professional rugby is making its first tentative steps as the country aims to move out from the shadow of Argentina.

Every day, five-year-old Sanjay could be found at Kolkata’s Howrah station, along with countless other street kids that called it home. There are 100,000 like him across India. But in Sanjay’s case, he got lucky, a charity found him, he learnt to play rugby, and now, years later, he not only has a family of his own, but he also coaches one of the best junior teams in the country.

In Rwanda, the scars from a genocide that saw the massacre of close to one million people, are still visible in the most literal sense. Yet they continue to reconcile with each other, as a society, coming together to remember, to never forget. As they strive to remove all divisions, rugby has played a small part in helping people unite.

South of Nazareth and north of the West Bank, with the Mediterranean and Jordan no more than 30 minutes to the west and east, lies a peaceful kibbutz that has made the most of the fertile valley it calls home. Everything seems to grow here, including rugby.

Almost 25 years after Kerry Packer attempted to change the face of rugby with a global series, another Australian has gone one step further. In May this year, Perth’s mining billionaire Andrew ‘Twiggy’ Forrest, helped Western Force rise from the ashes with the launch of World Series Rugby.

Beneath the gothic turrets of a glowering medieval castle, in an ancient cobbled town that’s inspired Twain, Turner and Nobel Prize winners, plays out a rugby tale with so many twists even brothers Grimm couldn’t make it up. Welcome to Heidelberg.

Situated along the east bank of the Mississippi River in south eastern Louisiana and nestled between the lowlands of the swamps, marshes and Lake Ponchatrain, lies the city known for bringing the wild and mystery of the night to life. New Orleans is many things to many people, but now it’s got something new to be proud of: a professional rugby team.

After Yugoslav and Serbian military and paramilitary forces swept through Kosovo, destroying more than 500 villages, the sky was filled with NATO air strikes, and millions of Kosovar Albanians were displaced. Among them was five-year-old Jerinë and her family.

Nyrsko in the Czech Republic counts a farmhand who ‘predicted’ World War Three among its claims to fame. Now the small town in the shadows of the Bohemian Forest, also has a rugby club.

The impact propelled Michael Collinson forward in his car seat. The giant bull landed on the roof, forcing it down on top of his neck, severing his spinal chord. A ‘perfect’ shot. Instantly, it made him a paraplegic. He died three times that night.