Chris Hewett

Five Lions tours, seven World Cups, dozens of major international matches on four continents - Chris wasn't selected for any of them, despite captaining the mighty Walcot Old Boys for a whole season (give or take the odd 60-day suspension).

Happily, he had the good fortune to spend a quarter of a century covering the union game's great occasions as a journalist, mostly as rugby correspondent of The Independent newspaper.

Chris cut his teeth as a sportswriter on the Bristol Evening Post, moved into magazines after the 1995 global tournament in South Africa and then surfaced in Fleet Street.

During his spell on the Indy, working alongside some of the most gifted wordsmiths in the profession, he ghosted columns with a starry cast of coaches: Jack Rowell, Andy Robinson, Eddie Jones, Brian Ashton and Brian Smith.

After the closure of the paper in 2016, he penned the autobiographies of such oval-ball luminaries as Rob Andrew, Ian Robertson and Warren Gatland.

Having finally accepted that Jeremy Guscott, a fellow Walcot man, was the better player, he spends his time composing a weekly column for The Rugby Paper.