Sam Leworthy is Stroud born and bred, rugby is his game and he plays for his hometown club.

And a very important player he is too because the 29-year-old, who made his 1^st XV debut at the age of 17, is in his second season as captain of the club.

Talk to Leworthy for just a couple of minutes and it quickly becomes apparent just how much Stroud Rugby mean to him.

“It’s always been a dream of mine to be captain,” said Leworthy, who this season is playing at inside centre. “I joined the club in the under-8s, Stroud are in my blood, they’re my team.”

And it’s fair to say he’s doing a pretty good job as captain because the club are riding high in the 11-strong Counties 3 Gloucestershire North.

Not that he’s found everything about being captain easy.

“I was very nervous about giving pre-match team talks,” he admitted. “It was something I’d never done before, talking for five minutes off the cuff is tricky.

“I’d been captain in youth rugby from 12 to 15 when my dad was the coach but you don’t really do team talks at that age.”

Happily, Leworthy says his team talks are getting better and once out on the pitch he is certainly someone who likes to lead from the front.

“I play as hard as I can,” he said. “I put in the hard work because that’s what the team need, I try to ingrain that into everyone.

“As a player I’m quite a hard hitter, I think I put in the big hits. When I’ve got the ball I’ve got a big hand-off and then I like to off-load.”

Stroud finished fourth in the old Gloucestershire 2 North last season and Leworthy insists: “We did pretty well. Last season was all about survival, this season it’s about enjoyment.”

Stroud, of course, were forced to drop down three divisions from the old Western Counties North at the start of 2021/22 when a significant number of their 1^st XV players decided to leave the club.

What made that decision all the more difficult was that before the first Covid-enforced lockdown in March 2020, Stroud were top of the 14-strong Western Counties North, 22 points clear of Matson having won all 21 of their games.  

“It was absolutely gutting,” said Leworthy. “We were a very, very good team, it was such a shame. A lot of my mates left, but enough stayed.”

But while that was one of the tougher times in Stroud’s long history – they were formed in 1873 – Leworthy is keen to look forward, not back.

“We’re enjoying ourselves,” he said. “We’re not going out onto the pitch saying we have to win, but we’re doing well because we’re happy.

“We’re playing some good rugby. We’ve got some fast forwards and we play an expansive game, we take the ball from one side of the pitch to the other.

“We’ve won games even when we haven’t necessarily got our best team out. My mentality is that we train to play, you have to train to play.”

And the club want to climb back up the divisions.

“We want to get back to where we were,” said Leworthy, a former Archway School pupil. “It will be a long process but that’s the aim. A few of the players who left two or three years ago have started to come back.

“Next season we want to run a regular 2^nd XV, if you get the atmosphere right at the club then people will want to come and play for us.”

There’s little doubt that Leworthy will continue playing for them for a good number of years, of course, although when he was very young he was initially a footballer.

“I played for Rodborough from the age of six to eight,” he said. “We used to live over the road from Stroud Rugby Club in Bath Road and the story goes that I asked my dad who played football there!

“Once I found out it was a rugby club, I wanted to go there and I’ve never looked back.”

Leworthy’s dad, Matthew, played for Cainscross back in the day and he also played a handful of games for Stroud 2nds alongside the youngest of his three sons.

Sam Leworthy has come a long way since those days, of course, even though he’s playing a number of levels below his peak when Stroud were sweeping all before them in Western Counties North.

“You score fewer tries at the higher level,” said Leworthy, who is a self-employed builder. “Defences are harder to break down. At the moment, if the opposition make a mistake you can run the length of the pitch to score.”

Stroud have certainly been piling up the points this season and Leworthy has obviously been playing a big part in their success but he’s by no means the only person trying to drive the club forward.

“Last season we were just relieved to get through it,” he admitted. “People like Mark Samak, Mark Phillips and Jake Marsh have all been brilliant. Rob Higgins has taken over as head coach, he was a second row for the club for many, many years, he’s the perfect man for the job.”

Joe Hoyle and Sam Hester, who both also play, are assisting him and Leworthy hopes that they, like him, will remain at the club for many years to come.

So how long does Leworthy, who is dad to one-year-old Finn, want to keep playing for?

“My dad played until he was 42,” he said. “I don’t mind dropping into the 2nds, 42 seems a good target to aim for.”