At Oldham’s Boundary Park, a ground where fame once flickered at the dawning of football’s Premiership era, one of league-union’s great crossover coaches, Mike Ford, is attempting his finest feat: reviving the fortunes of his home-town club.

Rosslyn Park had been blessed by Russian royalty, part of a much-vaunted history, but the advent of professionalism led to a plummet down the leagues. It was only saved when a stranger with a familiar surname walked through the clubhouse door offering a route to salvation.

Four times a year, one church in the Welsh valleys is packed to the rafters, standing room only, both young and old. Tongans have made a big impact on more than just rugby in Wales and, if you ask the Tuipulotus, the feeling is mutual.

The story of Bridgend-born Meg Webb, who plays for Brython Thunder, Bristol Bears and Wales, also features in the new issue of Rugby Journal. Available to buy here.

On the last day of training, three days before she gave birth, Abbie Ward was squatting over 100kgs, reeling off deadlifts, bench pressing and rowing. Less than three weeks, a C-section and a baby girl later, and the Bristol Bear forward is back at work.

Saved from extinction for the cost of ‘one hundred trips to Paris’, Cambridge leapt from third to first on the final day of the season to secure what seemed an unlikely promotion to the Championship. It’s a story that even their former chair Jeffrey Archer couldn’t make up.

It’s seen the highs of visiting All Blacks and a dominant Pooler, and the lows of arson and financial collapse. But now, after a decade of turmoil, Pontypool Park will once again play host to top-flight Welsh club rugby.

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.

In 1987, Yorkshire won the county championship with a side flush with British Lion-class talent from Rob Andrew and Peter Winterbottom to Rory Underwood. Today, while the talent remains, the White Rose is still to truly bloom in rugby’s top division.

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.

When a fifty-year-old Topsham printer went to Exeter to try and get a game of rugby, he was told he was too old for them. Undeterred, he opted to set up his own club, in a town known for building warships, fishing, and having an awful lot of pubs.

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.

In Estonia, just south of Finland, next door to Russia, Rugby World Cup winner Graham Smith ponders thirty years of coaching. For a slaughterman who almost had to literally fight off the bailiffs, the Black Country boy has done well.

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. 

For decades, the Hong Kong Sevens has been the epicentre of rugby in the region, but now, with the support of the world’s most famous tournament for the abridged game, the South China Tigers are changing the landscape.

Think of Syria, and some think of civil war, or perhaps the four million people fleeing the country fearing for their lives. Others, though, have a different vision. Of lemon trees, jasmine, fountains... ... and rugby.

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.

The Dorchester Gladiators arrived for the tour match wearing heavily the impact of the night before, which had ended only a few hours earlier. As they stepped from the bus, they found themselves facing photographers and TV crews. On the pitch, things got worse, as they faced the 24-time Romanian champions, with every minute broadcast live on national television.

One month they could be facing the Army in front of 50,000, the next they’re facing Somali pirates armed with assault rifles in hostile waters. Their greatest honour is made from the timber of Lord Nelson’s ship, and HMS Ark Royal once ruled the rugby pitch, as it did the waves. Royal Navy rugby is never dull.

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.