CHRIS HEWETT

Back in 2008, when a Labour government was running the country and the Rugby Football Union couldn’t run a tap, your columnist schlepped up to Leicester for a chat with Martin Castrogiovanni, the prop with a surname too long for his shirt. As interviews go, it was a belter.

“My mum didn’t want me to play rugby,” he said that day. “So I played basketball, right up until I was 18. But rugby was the game I really wanted to try, so I switched.”
How? “I punched the referee. Well, not a punch, exactly – it was part punch, part push. Whatever it was, I knew I wouldn’t be playing muc...