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.

Two years after beating the All Blacks, the legendary 1971 British & Irish Lions decided to get together for one last hurrah. The men who’d faced down the haka now headed for Penryn, an ancient Cornish borough on a river where pirates once hid, men hauled granite and Spanish ships were sent fleeing by the townsfolk.

England Women are the best rugby team on the planet. Twenty three wins in a row. Two wins over New Zealand and a Six Nations campaign where they put fifty points on everyone except France. The World Cup is next. The secret? 90s Eurodance, second chances and accepting ‘the hurt’.

Spurred on by Mr Koko’s offer of 50 Rand for every try, a young South African cricketer called Zintle Mpupha, from a village deep in the bush, was inspired to not only captain her country at sevens, but also make history in the English game.

It was only five years ago that Jaz Joyce could “barely catch”, “barely pass” and only “got away with it” because she was fast. She also nearly quit five times. But she didn’t. Instead, she’s in the vanguard of a new era for Welsh women’s rugby.

In the kind of town you’ve driven through a thousand times, Viking chiefs once roamed, a shop-keeping British & Irish Lion was raised, Russian KGB agents were snubbed and ‘the Wasps’ were given an almighty fright by the rugby kings of Cumbria.

To celebrate the launch of Rugby Towns, a celebration of the rugby and communities telling stories of clubs and the towns in which they’re based across Britain and Ireland, we’ve got a bespoke Canterbury kit including jersey, shorts and socks for a squad of 23 to be won.

In the space of little more than two teenage years, he went from sitting on the bench with Jamie Vardy against Man Utd to making a European rugby debut in Spain, scoring a try, kicking goals, breaking a leg and then losing his crutches to a drunk team doctor. Life has never been dull for Danny Care.