After years of touch rugby in Phuket, the Sri Lankan Champions arrived with 12 Internationals to mark the birth of contact. Despite combining 9 Nations of talent we suffered an auspicious defeat - but the legend was born.

The club leapt (crawled) from strength to strength, began hosting games and even hosted an International 15's. After a year we were awarded with our first victory over some crap Bangkok side (Corsairs).

A transient squad resulted in awesome victories and auspicious defeats (somewhat like Wales), but with tours to Hat Yai, Bangkok and Manila the club emerged as an entity (rather than force) within the Thai Rugby Union.

Dulwich International College provided us with a regular pitch, as well as supplying us new players. Then came sponsorship from the Phuket Gazette which provided a name change to the Phuket Gazettes. Thankfully they saw the error of their ways and withdrew sponsorship, allowing us to ditch the world's silliest name and revert to being the Phuket Vagabonds (the newspaper only ever reports games we lose........)

Presently we are aiming to strengthen our pool of players by reducing reliance on rotational expats who are always pissed, bar owners who are always pissed and press ganged tourists who are also, always pissed.

We hope Phuket rugby will continue to develop (sobering up at least) and that the Vagabonds will be a permanent feature for both Thai and Asian teams to defeat...erm visit.

Supplied by Ben Hennessy and a spell checker