As the All Blacks enter four years of self-doubt, 'Rugby Reloaded' talks to David Scott about his book 'Return to Rugby Land' and his reflections about the place of rugby union in New Zealand history and society. It's a book that combines his own personal memories with observations on rugby in NZ culture and the position of Maori, Polynesians and Women in the game - and we end with his thoughts on rugby in Sir Lanka where he now lives.

This week sees the start of the Great Britain Lions' tour of New Zealand and Papua New Guinea, so we look at the origins of the GB-NZ rivalry and go back to Cheltenham, the genteel town which staged the deciding test match of the 1908 series. Yes, Cheltenham! Step into the ten-minute time tunnel to discover its historic role in rugby league history. For more on the history of rugby and the other football codes, follow me on Twitter @collinstony and take a look at www.rugbyreloaded.com

To mark Black History Month, this week's podcast looks at the pioneering life and times of Lucius Banks, the first Amercian to play professional rugby and the first black athlete to play professional rugby league. This is a remarkable life story of an African-American man born two decades after the end of slavery, travelled across the Atlantic to play a sport he had never seen, and returned home to struggle against racism for the rest of his life - a pioneer on and off the pitch. For more on the history of rugby and the other football codes, follow me on Twitter @collinstony and take a look at www.rugbyreloaded.com

On Friday 11 October it will be the 50th anniversary of my father taking me to my first-ever Hull Kingston Rovers match. To mark the anniversary, this week's 'Rugby Reloaded plus' chats to 1960s Hull KR forward Keith Pollard about his life in rugby league in England and Australia, and talks about his autobiography, 'Red & White Phoenix: the adventures of a Hessle Road lad'. For more on the history of rugby and the other football codes, follow me on Twitter @collinstony and take a look at www.rugbyreloaded.com

This week we talk to Michael Aylwin, rugby union correspondent of the 'Guardian' and the author of a new book, 'Unholy Union: When Rugby Collided With The Modern World'. It’s a ‘state of the nation’ review of the problems and challenges facing rugby union today, almost 25 years since the sport took the momentous decision to go professional. Is its future conditioned by its amateur past, or can it become a purely commercial entertainment? For more on the history of rugby and the other football codes, follow me on Twitter @collinstony and take a look at www.rugbyreloaded.com

This autumn is the 50th anniversary of the now infamous 1969 South African rugby union tour of Britain and Ireland. On Wednesday, BBC Wales will screen Gareth Edwards' 'Rugby, Apartheid and Me' in which he re-examines his decision not boycott South Africa in the 1960s and 1970s. So this week's 'Rugby Reloaded' looks back at 1969, and the tour that was historic for all the wrong reasons. For more on the history of rugby and the other football codes, follow me on Twitter @collinstony and take a look at www.rugbyreloaded.com

Rugby Union's World Cup kicks off on Friday - but why did it take the game until 1987 to stage a world cup? 'Rugby Reloaded' plus talks to journalist and historian Huw Richards about the tangled pre-history of the world cup and how it eventually kicked off Down Under.

For more on the history of rugby and the other football codes, follow me on Twitter @collinstony and take a look at www.rugbyreloaded.com

As the kick-off for rugby union's world cup in Japan approaches, this week's 'Rugby Reloaded' steps back sixty-five years to explore the origins and tangled history of rugby's first world cup - the 1954 Rugy League World Cup. Initiated by a leader of the French Resistance, the RLWC has a tangled history whose promise has yet to be fulfilled. Could the 2021 RLWC be the turning point?

For more on the history of rugby and the other football codes, follow me on Twitter @collinstony and take a look at www.rugbyreloaded.com

Fiji has been a hotbed of rugby for over a century. It provides stars to the NRL and to rugby union around the world. In the 1950s northern England was lit up by the talent of its players. And it continues to dominate the world of rugby union sevens. Yet it has always been treated as a second-class citizen by world rugby union, and in today's globalised world, it looks like the future pf Fijian rugby could be league. For more on the history of rugby and the other football codes, follow me on Twitter @collinstony and take a look at www.rugbyreloaded.com

Ahead of Thursday's anniversary of the founding of the Northern Union in 1895, 'Rugby Reloaded' looks as the forgotten genius of English rugby, Dicky Lockwood. A manual labourer who captained the England rugby union team, Lockwood symbolised the rise of the northern working-class rugby player in the 19th century amd became the living embodiment of rugby's great split, yet his story was ignored and his legacy disappeared. Find out why in this week's ten-minute time tunnel. For more on the history of rugby and the other football codes, follow me on Twitter @collinstony and take a look at www.rugbyreloaded.com