The tentacles of international rugby are exceptionally sensitive and far reaching, as 18-year-old Tom Davidson from Settle will testify.

He currently plays his club rugby at Wharfedale and was recently fly-half in the Yorkshire Under 20 team that met Gloucestershire in the final of the National Under-20 Championship at Twickenham in May.

Among the crowd on that occasion was a special guest from the Emerald Isle, the Latvian Ambassador to Ireland, Reinars Danelsone.

He was at HQ specifically to run the rule over 18-year-old Davidson, whose grandfather, Helmuts Francmanis, was born in Latvia. He fled from the communist invasion to England as a teenager in 1944.

While Yorkshire were beaten by Gloucestershire, young Davidson did enough to persuade his assessor that he had plenty of offer the Latvian Under-20 team and the nation’s rugby officials moved swiftly to get him on board.

Too rapidly, in fact, for requests for him to play in a sevens tournament in Poland later in the week were just a bit too hasty for the family to handle the logistics.

However, that disappointment was quickly erased when all the necessary paperwork was put in place for him to fly to Riga and join the Latvian Under-20 team for the Eastern European Sevens in Moscow.

That will be followed up by his involvement in other training camps as preparations are made for the European Championships in Prague from September 2-9.

“Like many lads his age, he’s totally disorganised and I worry about how he’ll find his way to Riga,” said his dad Andrew, a stalwart fly-half for young Tom’s first club North Ribblesdale RFC.

“But we’ve now been to London to get his papers sorted out. The connection came through my father-in-law originally, but I took a group of students to Latvia in 1992 and then I organised a tour to Riga for North Ribblesdale in 1996.

“As a result, I built up a relationship with several of the LRU Federation hierarchy, who always said ‘When your sons are older they must play for Latvia!’”

In 2001 Reinars Danelsone, the son of a family first encountered on the 1992 trip, stayed with the Davidsons in Settle and when his mother was enquiring about the family by e-mail, mention of young Tom’s sporting prowess was made in the reply.

From that point the wheels turned very quickly and he is now is now on board for the European Championships in Moscow, with games in a group containing Russia, Ukraine, Lithuania, Norway, Latvia.

His last visit to Latvia was as a ten-year-old in 2001 for Riga’s 800 anniversary celebrations, but now his papers are organised, his new dual passport awaits him in Riga and ‘Tomaz’ Davidsons is ready for a new rugby adventure, which could even have an Olympic Games appearance at the end of it all.

All a far cry from the day when granddad arrived in the UK with one brown shoe and one black and a shilling, given him by the king, but that’s the network that rugby union offers.