Shaunagh Brown searched for her opponent’s name. If she was going to fight for the first time, she wanted to know who she was facing. Google told her nothing. The gym she supposedly trained at knew nothing. Then, into the ring walked a European silver medallist. She’d been stitched up. 

He’s not as fast as his dad, but Adam Radwan, the half-Egyptian wing from a village near Sheepwash, was quick enough to score three tries on his England debut. Luckily, he’s got a cap to prove it, otherwise he’d never believe it happened.

More than a decade ago, Steve Hansen told Bill Sweeney that England would never win another World Cup. England just weren’t set up for it. When Bill got the chance to prove him wrong, he had just a few problems to overcome, starting with 119 redundancies and a global pandemic.

A meadow of bulls where a thousand years has seen two battles with the barbarians, the birth of Bram Stoker, and lots of rugby silverware. Welcome to the Parish. Welcome to Clontarf.

Merthyr Tydfil was once a global capital of industry, a master of steel, iron and coal, the envy of the world. And then, it wasn’t. New industries came, but then went. Television shows even began to mock them. But, the people of Merthyr are made of stronger stuff, and, through rugby, a new generation has been inspired, with the help of Sir Stanley and a man known as ‘Chief’.

After a year playing with Japanese forklift truck factory workers and taking spiritual visits to Hiroshima, Freddie Burns has returned with a new perspective. He won’t be the ‘laughing stock of world rugby’ anymore. And, ask him anything, and you’ll get a straight answer. Especially when you ask about Bath.

Less than a year after signing a peace agreement, the United Arab Emirates and Israel met for a rugby match, the first sporting event between the two. At the heart of it, is a man famed for hospitalising three Welshmen and laying waste to a nation’s hopes thirty years ago. Apollo Perelini, aka The Terminator, is the most unlikely of peacekeepers.

The Pony Club is an unusual place to find elite half-backs, but if you were a rugby scout in the Midlands around the mid-1990s watching a spot of tetrathlon, you could have snapped up two: brother and sister Tony and Jo Yapp.

As the best side in the league, most thought Gloucester had the Premiership title sewn up in 2003, but inspiring Wasps to a 39-3 win in the final was Alex King, a fly-half who is now, almost twenty years later, trying to finally make amends to The Shed.

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.

It was a rugby team that brought together rival players, embraced those that felt they were ‘a little bit shit’, that advised sports ministers, that beat Test nations, that confronted punky Beth Ditto lookalikes in McDonalds and would pave the way for the women’s Barbarians. This was the Nomads: gone and only partially forgotten.

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.

The village of Caldy hadn’t seen crowds like it since the big dances of the 1960s. Three thousand people descended on Paton Field, filling the grassy slope that gives the best view. Could a small club unknown to many, reach English rugby’s second tier?

Seven years ago, having taken Kenya to fifth in the world, Mike Friday was set to step away from rugby. The politics were too much and he’d had enough. Only a call from a former Wasp changed his mind and he ended up starting an American revolution.

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.

They conceded 1,240 points, and scored 63. From 18 league games, they suffered 18 defeats. Last season, DMP Sharks delivered the worst performance in Allianz Premier 15s’ brief history. But it got worse. Just 83 days later, their entire existence was threatened.

Almost twenty years ago, Trevor Leota was helping Wasps become champions of Europe, but today the 46-year-old grandad is helping people in a different way, as a mental health worker determined to help halt the rise in youth suicide.

In front of a packed wooden stand that once belonged to Everton FC, Gill Burns made her England debut at Waterloo, in a game she’d helped organise. Impressed by what he saw, an alickadoo congratulated her while steering her away from the players’ bar. There were, after all, no women or dogs allowed.

When the tough Welsh valleys boys arrived at Butlin’s for the under-12s festival, they weren’t expecting to find themselves dump-tackled and danced around by a 12-year-old girl called Nolli. But that’s what happened. And, decades later, they can still feel every one of the bruises.

The ending wasn’t quite how he’d imagined it. Defeat in his final home game in front of an empty stadium; solace in a win for his 300th and final club appearance at Leicester; but then came the Barbarians... For Chris Robshaw, and everyone that knows him, it’s been emotional.