The good, the bad & the rugby - reloaded - Alex Payne

The Highs. The Heartbreaks. The Hangovers.

The Personal. The Vulnerable. The Downright Absurd.

IT'S TIME TO RELOAD.

As was widely predicted, our first book, The Good, The Bad & The Rugby - Unleashed, did not win a Pulitzer Prize. It did, however, scoop Sports Entertainment Book of the Year at the 2025 Charles Tyrwhitt Sports Book Awards (and sold quite a lot of copies), so here we are again, back for a sequel.

What more have we to say? It's a fair question. Hask can mine more new material from a trip to the supermarket than most people can from an entire lifetime - and you won't be surprised to learn that he hasn't just been hanging around Asda since our last book came out. He recently turned 40, he's been through much personal turmoil, he's done an awful lot of DJing - and he's had a lot of arguments. Expect much of that, and even some thoughts on rugby, in the following pages.

As for Tins, you'll find out about his early days in rugby, how he had to fight to make it, what he thinks of the state of the game, and his plans to get it back on track. Meanwhile, Alex will tell you all about his career in broadcasting, from making ('disgusting') tea and coffee, and presenting some of the greatest rugby matches in history, to getting binned by Sky.

We should end by begging you to pardon our previous flippancy. It was, of course, lovely to win that award, as well as very surprising. In fact, The Good, The Bad & The Rugby will never stop surprising us, and its continuing success is largely down to you - our wonderful listeners, viewers and now readers. We do hope you enjoy what follows and that you keep coming back for more.

Winners of the Charles Tyrwhitt Sports Book Awards 2025 Sports Entertainment Book of the Year, for their previous book The Good, The Bad and The Rugby - Unleashed.