Despite the reputation of the Gower years in the 1920s, it wasn’t until 1955 the 1st XI won every match for the first time. In the seasons either side of that the XV only lost three matches and also reached the final of the Rosslyn Park Sevens. The 1964 and 1975 sides lost only once, the defeat in 1975 at Wellington 7-9 with the winning score coming with “the last kick of the game”.

The second 100% season was in 1993 with, again, the key match coming against Wellington where we trailed until levelling five minutes from time and before James Deffiere “kicked the winning penalty from the ten yard line with the last kick of the match”.

In 2005, the third 100% winning side, we had few alarms during the season until the final game against, almost inevitably, Wellington, an opposition the Cranleighan described as “a side who were nowhere near as good as us”. We trailed 23-19 going into the last quarter before two late tries gave us the win.

The fourth instance was in 2017, built around a very strong core who had won the Rosslyn Park Sevens in the previous two seasons. They were never really tested in any of the games with the most impressive performance a 42-12 demolition of a strong Whitgift XV. Two years later the feat was repeated in an equally commanding manner.

The 2024 side had a far tougher time but showed the value of never giving up. Against Brighton with five minutes left we were down to 13 players and trailed 5-14 before two late tries, the last with the final play, earned us a 17-14 win. Harrow was equally tense and again we came from behind, this time 20-29 down with ten minutes to play and a man in the sin bin, to score in the final seconds to win 30-29.