The only Northampton Saint remaining – and still active – from their brief sink into the Championship back in 2007, the giant lock/flanker stands over 2m tall in his socks.

For the club and its fans, and indeed for country, he has often stood much taller. In this season’s Investec Champions Cup alone he has delivered two mountainous performances as the Saints dug in to clinch tight wins over Glasgow Warriors and RC Toulon.

A seemingly indestructible force in the Northampton Saints back-row he was, in the latter game especially, the nemesis of the opposition attempts to get any sort of stable possession platform at line-out or ruck time.

However, that’s what we’ve come to expect; His quiet, humble nature and fierce work ethic has defined his play his entire career, but Lawes has been a man fighting against the odds his entire career.

Even of his early days he is direct: “At one point it was difficult to get into rugby if you didn’t go to a nicer school,” he once said. “I would never have played if I hadn’t gone to Northampton school for boys. Rugby wasn’t the best in terms of people from working-class and middle-class backgrounds having access to it.