Gloucester

Gloucester sit in the Premiership, and the pattern that has followed them for decades holds again: still chasing a first league title. They finished as runners-up in four separate seasons — 1988–89, 1989–90, 2002–03 and 2006–07.

What the league has withheld, the cup competitions have made up for. Gloucester won the RFU Knockout Cup, later known as the John Player Cup, four times between 1972 and 2003, added the Anglo-Welsh Cup in 2011, and took the Premiership Rugby Cup in 2024. In Europe they lifted the Challenge Cup twice, beating London Irish in 2006 and Edinburgh in 2015.

The club grew out of a meeting at the Spread Eagle Hotel in 1873. Kingsholm, bought outright from the Castle Grim Estate in 1891 for £4,000, has stayed home ever since, and its Shed terrace has a reputation for making away sides uncomfortable long before kick-off. Ownership passed to Tom Walkinshaw in 1997, who rebuilt the club's structure for the professional era, and later to Martin St Quinton, who took full control in 2016.

Among those the Shed still talks about is Alan Brinn, whose 574 appearances remain the club record. The West Country Derby against Bath remains the fixture that matters most, with Bristol Bears also treated as local rivals.