For his first fourteen years, hospital was a second home for Ayaz Bhuta. Some people, even relatives, said he wasn’t ‘normal’. They were right. Becoming world champion isn’t something ‘normal’ people do. This is the ‘Jonah Lomu of wheelchair rugby’ we’re talking about, a man so special he never has to pay for fried chicken again.

Stafford, Staffordshire. Seemingly unremarkable, with a ‘favourite son’ that penned the seminal works on fishing and another finding fame with Boon and Bob the Builder. It’s had its moments of excitement too, with Viking invasions and civil wars and was branded ‘Little London’ by James I. Now, it has a somewhat lesser-known, but still loved, favourite son back in the fold: Aly Muldowney.

On a cluster of Caribbean islands off the coast of Venezuela, the first roots of rugby union are beginning to emerge in a country famed for its spice. With the nation’s strongest man in the line-up, Grenada have made a quiet entrance into the world of rugby.

To some Tonga is seen only as an island paradise. To others, it’s a country caught up in a global drugs trade, with an economy that relies on overseas relatives, and is being forced to accept a growing influx of convicted criminals. To put it another way, losing a rugby match 102-0 to the All Blacks is the least of its worries.

“In Islamic society, people normally think of ladies in general as having to stay at home and take care of their families, so whenever men see women playing these sports, they are afraid to see us as fearless.”

They had fixtures against rugby’s elite, including the All Blacks. They produced players for England and even had the tenacity to have a level playing field. Albion, a side made up of dockyard workers in the city of Plymouth, never knew their place. And they still don’t.

At a tournament funded by a company with a $2.43 trillion market cap, rugby was showcased to a crowd of 6,000 in Saudi Arabia. They’ve also relaunched their rugby federation and put a sevens side into the Arab Games for the first time. In a country that divides opinion, so often going big on the sporting front, rugby is quietly taking some small steps in development.

As he addressed the RFU Board for the final time, Geoff Irvine stated, ‘the illegitimate child (the Championship) that was fathered by the RFU is being sent to the orphanage!’. It fell on deaf ears. In two decades at the frontier of English rugby’s top two divisions he’d witnessed fist fights in board rooms, accusations and conspiracy, as the egos of rich men fought for supremacy. But this was the final straw.

At the heart of China’s rugby ambitions on the island of Hainan in the South China Sea, there’s an obvious outsider. The height of his playing CV reads Edinburgh Accies and Murrayfield Wanderers but this Scotsman, aged just 35, is the driving force behind China’s Olympic challenge at Tokyo 2020. Euan Mackintosh is the most influential Scottish coach you’ve never heard of.

At the 2016 Rio Olympics, New Zealand won eighteen medals, the biggest haul in their history and a stark contrast to 2000, when they took just four back across the Tasman. Among those leading the change was a Scottish-born synchronised swimmer called Katie Sadleir, now she’s trying to create even bigger change, in women’s rugby. 

Four years after the Cadbury brothers gave us Dairy Milk, and six years before they delivered Milk Tray, the world’s most famous chocolatiers gave us Bournville RFC. More than a century later, the club have finally joined their plastic-wrapped Bournville siblings on the national stage. 

At the end of the game, she could feel the tears in the crowd. The journey had come to an end. Ruby Tui, a girl inspired by her superhero mum, who could so easily have taken so many wrong turns, was on top of the world.

The pain shot like a bolt between his shoulders, unlike anything he’d ever felt. He was out running and looked towards strangers in the park, pondering whether to ask for their help. Deciding against it, Clive Griffiths ran home instead and, hours later, was in the ICU having had a heart attack.

Just west of France on an island stretching nine miles by five, you’ll find one of the ten oldest buildings in the world, deserted Nazi war tunnels, a booming financial centre, two languages and the best rugby side outside of the Premiership, the Jersey Reds.

Her father was a pimp and her mother was a prostitute. Aged 18 months old, she was abandoned and raised in care. Education was her way out and she went on to manage a supermodel, Michelin-starred chefs, Peter Gabriel and become the most influential woman in English rugby. ‘Remarkable’ doesn’t begin to do justice to the story of Maria Pedro.

In the summer of 2017, Lichfield Ladies had their ‘heart ripped out’ by the RFU’s decision not to give them a ticket to the Premier 15s party. The team that had produced Emily Scarratt and Sarah Hunter was sent into oblivion. Almost everyone left. But one team is not a club and Lichfield Ladies have roared again, loud enough for Leicester Tigers to come knocking.  

The first time Portugal qualified for a Rugby World Cup in 2007, the campaign had included 83-0 defeats, having guns pulled on them in Uruguay, and then getting drawn against the All Blacks at the main event. This time around, for France 2023, they did it the hard way.

In the days of the British Empire, Nottingham was the epicentre of the world’s lace trade. It was then that a lace baron by the name of Birkin sewed the first stitch in turning the city’s rugby club into one of the nation’s finest.

At a Rugby World Cup where the Russians tried to fund themselves by selling contraband, the French barely made it at all, and England and New Zealand were favourites, a USA team featuring the ‘locks from hell’, the ‘mother of rugby’, a stunt woman hand-picked by Burt Reynolds, and coached by a Welsh PE teacher, pulled off one of the sport’s greatest shocks.

Aged nineteen, Jimmy Gopperth walked into a changing room with Jonah Lomu, Christian Cullen and Tana Umaga. All he had to do, he was told by the All Blacks’ captain, was ‘be loud and push us around the field’. That was the easy bit. What wasn’t so easy, was displacing Dan Carter.