Sam was a 30-goal-a-season striker (for one campaign) and Joe found the rigours of life at Torquay United ‘too serious’. Luckily, salvation was found in rugby, at Teignmouth RFC, where two Simmonds brothers had already tore it up many years before.

See the iconic British & Irish Lions play at home for the first time since 2005 by entering our competition to win two tickets at BT Murrayfield.

2020 was meant to be the year that Emma Uren finally had a story to rival that of her mother Lotta’s tales of working with Madonna and the Red Hot Chilli Peppers. Instead, she underwent major hamstring surgery, was made redundant, and ended up modelling her mum’s Swedish clogs more often than she pulled on a pair of rugby boots.

On a farm in Leicestershire, in what was once a cow shed, the world’s best rugby player is using straw bales for squats, doing pull-ups on pallets and kicking balls though old tractor tyres. The only real challenge for Emily Scarratt, is a 500-piece puzzle. Now that’s ‘next-level’, she admits.

Obsessed with winning the World Cup, Eddie Jones failed to change and it cost him his job. It wasn’t his fault, it was everyone else’s. After trying to prove points, he rediscovered his love for coaching with South Africa, which led to Japan, England, and another World Cup final. He may have lost, but he’s not done. He wants to create the greatest team in the world. And then? He’s off to Hawaii.

In 2014, owner Mike Gooley sent a letter to club members to clear up a few misconceptions about his involvement with Ealing Trailfinders.

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.

“I had those thoughts for sure and, I suspect a few of the other guys did as well, thinking ‘what am I hanging around for? The universe is telling me to move on to pastures new’. But no one’s really seen that as an option.”

“We’re in the same boat as the people in the entertainment industry, we can only do what we love to do and what we’ve trained so hard to do. So when they say, ‘you’ve just got to retrain’. Well, no. We still have goals and aspirations and you can’t just walk away from that.”

Before lockdown, Celia Quansah and Meg Jones were living their best rugby lives. Paid to be professional sevens players, the former heptathlete and 2017 Rugby World Cup finalist had the Olympics in their sights. One Zoom call from the RFU’s Conor O’Shea later, and it feels like it’s all over.

For world-champion coal carrier Phil Ounsley, seeing his daughter haul a bag of carrots around the kitchen was a sign she had a sporting future. He was right. Four years after first picking up a rugby ball, Jodie was offered an England contract and the former cat photographer had set her sights on the Tokyo Olympics.

It wasn’t that long ago that Ethan Waddleton was ripping it up in Dubai, making dream teams and living the best sevens life. Now, he’s in Ipswich, more than a few country miles from the first-class rugby life and dreaming of the day when he can get ‘beasted’ at Lensbury once again.

Taking a call from England Sevens head coach James Bailey while working through a severe hangover in Amsterdam kickstarted the best year of Beth Wilcock’s life. But when it all ended, she hit her lowest ebb. Stepping in to help her were a cast of four dogs, three brothers, two foster siblings, two parents, a parrot, a snake and a gecko.

When he tested positive for Covid-19, Ben Harris counted himself lucky he only suffered a loss of taste. It was the latest event in a rollercoaster year that had seen him switch England Sevens for the Premiership, and then the Championship. But while he is focused on helping Saracens back to the top, he still has one eye on Tokyo 2021.

Three years after losing on his debut to Italy, Serge Betsen rose from the bench against England in the first-ever Six Nations. He was given less than 15 minutes to prove his worth, to prove that leaving him out for three years was a mistake. But, in a haze of emotion, he was sent off almost immediately. France lost, and coach Bernard Laporte told the media Serge would never play for his country again.

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.

In the shadows of Snowdonia, a town that declared independence from one of history’s most feared kings more than 700 years ago, is now home to a rugby club that’s powered by farmers, inspired by an archdruid, and has a girls’ section that’s the envy of Wales.

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