Coventry R.F.C

Coventry sit in National League 1, the tier they know best — three of their league titles have come there, most recently in 2017-18. That rebuilding mattered: administration in 2009-10 cost them a 15-point deduction and relegation from the RFU Championship, and it took Jon Bowles buying the club that January, forming Coventry Rugby Ltd, to keep it going. It was not the first rescue. In 1998 the club went into receivership, and Keith Fairbrother, once a player there, returned as chairman to pull it through.

The Sky Blues nickname, and the blue-and-white hoops that go with it, are shared with the football club across town — no coincidence, just a city with one set of colours to go round.

The Boxing Day derby against Moseley is played every December 26th.

David Duckham is the name people still reach for first. He toured with the British & Irish Lions in 1971 and played for England out of Coventry, and it is his era — Fran Cotton and Peter Jackson among the other Lions to wear the club's colours — that the club measures itself against still.