Stories from Dutch rugby clubs. Each one is on that club’s page.
A.S.R.V. Ascrum
About twenty names went on a noticeboard. After a Delft sevens trip in old white shirts and borrowed football kit, they decided that evening to make the club permanent.
AAC
The club records that a Club of 100, demonstration matches, waste-paper collections and work on the building site raised about 85,000 guilders. The first pile was driven on 16 April 1965.
Alkmaarse R.U.F.C.
Local reporting says the group began as Walking Rugby and changed to T1 when its members wanted more challenge. Rugby Nederland invited it to demonstrate T1 at half-time during Netherlands versus Spain on 7 February 2026.
Amstelveense RC
Shared training-night meals grew into a weekly club moment. ARC was named Amstelveen Association of the Year 2023.
ARC The Pigs
Malburgen’s neighbourhood newsroom reported in 2019 that wild pigs completely turned over the first playing field allocated to the Arnhem club. The report says that incident became the origin story for the name The Pigs.
BRC
An archived club history says Breda ordered BRC to leave its La Reyweg site within a week in September 1987. During the confused eviction the clubhouse burned, and the club returned to Sportpark Wisselaar.
Cas RC
Kees Kabel recruited players in Castricum's pubs and kept a car boot full of football boots with him. The group met in the dunes each Sunday morning to learn rugby from Dick Hamel, and Kabel founded Rugbyclub De Kannibalen.
DRC Phoenix
Local emergency reporting says the old clubhouse was destroyed by fire on 30 December 2009. The dossier records the club's move to its current Sportpark Tuikwerd ground in 2014.
DRC The Wild Rovers
The club says its name comes from The Dubliners' 'Wild Rover' and preserves the song in a standing archive post.
DSR-C
A Delft university-news report records the tradition that a new entrant to Dutch competition first played a friendly against DSR-C. The dossier deliberately treats this as a reported tradition, not formal recognition authority.
ERC '69
At founding, every player came from Enschede's textile college, producing the name TEX. It became RC Tex-Drienerlo when technical-university students joined, then Drienerlo-Tex once they outnumbered the textile students; the association adopted ERC 69 in 1999.
ESRC The Elephants
In a 1982 TU/e interview, founder and trainer Jacques de Mooy said Elephants and former Elephants were closely involved in starting and training clubs in Valkenswaard, Budel and Lelystad.
EZRC Oemoemenoe
A Zeeland reference and regional report explain Oemoemenoe as Zeeuws dialect for 'what do we do now?' They say the phrase was spoken when the founding meeting could not settle on a name, although they disagree about who said it.
Feanster RC
The club's history says rugby players at De Wrotters who lived near Heerenveen set out to form a team there. The account supports a new team taking shape, not a legal split or merger.
G.S.R.C.
A club archive says Ascot Manor I was built at the Stadspark from 1988 and later had to make way for the Gasunie office. Ascot Manor II opened at Corpus den Hoorn in December 1990.
GRC Tovaal
A club article says the GanzenTafel was cut from the old bar of Tovaal's first clubhouse. The later building is described as two clubhouses under one roof for Tovaal and GMHC.
Haagsche RC
In 1968/69 the club left league competition while members built their own clubhouse. It opened in September 1969, and the 2019 rebuild was raised on top of that building.
L.S.R.G.
After the 2000/01 season, the club says it had about fourteen members, no coach, a debt at Minerva and a club account at zero. Its recovery plan called for an open culture and argued that graduation should not mean stopping.
Maastrichtse RC
In 2024, the club said its youth and senior teams would wear one kit for the next three seasons. Its supporters page brings old EMRC members, Maraboes, Margrieten and Mambas together as one rugby family.
NRC The Wasps
The club chronicle calls its May 1980 Staddijk event the first national women's tournament in the Netherlands and says twelve women's teams took part.
NSRV Obelix
The club history says a turbulent November 1979 meeting, where drinking further clouded the decision-making, led to a house-rules clause banning alcohol during general meetings.
ORC Black Bulls
The club says its name and logo derive from The Black Bull, the British 11th Armoured Division that, alongside American forces, helped liberate Overloon and the surrounding area during the Battle of Overloon.
Pickwick Players
The dossier records that Pickwick inherited its colours from a batch of shirts ordered by The Pigs and never collected.
RC 't Gooi
The history says RC ’t Gooi started in an imported flat-pack wooden building and was housed in another wooden building eighty years later.
RC Aachen
A 2025 regional report says Rugby Club Aachen offered 629 symbolic pitch parcels at EUR 50 as part of funding a new artificial pitch.
RC Betuwe
With its pitch covered in snow and frozen, RC Betuwe invited Obelix and The Wasps to a sevens tournament in the local horse manege. Betuwe's history says it won both matches.
RC Bulldogs
The club's origin account starts at a school playground in Almere-Haven. The group later contacted an Amstelveen youth coach and took 25 players to matches.
RC De Wrotters
Members' own work created an interior the club compares to a brown café, with its regulars' table made from the old bar.
RC Delft
The club's post sitemap lists the numbered historical series through at least instalment 31. One entry republishes a 1994 lustrum-trip report.
RC Den Helder
RCDH had no clubhouse or floodlights in its early years for financial reasons. Car headlights were sometimes used to illuminate training.
RC DIOK
The club says DIOK means Doorzetten Is Onze Kracht. A Leiden historical chronicle reports an oral-history variant in which the initials first meant Drank Is Onze Kracht and were later changed after a federation objection.
RC Drachten
A 2024 local anniversary interview reports an unsuccessful 1965 effort to establish rugby in Drachten. It separately records the later club's first victory within a year of its 1974 founding.
RC Dwingeloo
A GP who had played in Groningen founded Rugbyclub Dwingeloo in 1974. The council granted a pitch only after he threatened to buy a meadow and play there, and the early side temporarily used a football pitch with extended goal posts.
RC Eemland
Rugby reached Eemland College through a 1975 English Day where pupils played teachers. The club that grew from it had to leave because studs were damaging the school lawn; the posts still stood there.
RC Eindhoven
The club history says Thal Larsen founded RCE on 30 July 1929 after moving to Eindhoven for Philips. After playing in Delft, he and J.C. Schut invited The Corinthians and a Delft side for a demonstration match.
RC Emmen
A 2025 local-news account describes RC Emmen's Highland Games as based on Scottish clan games. An archived 2017 club page explains King of the Ring, where two teams used a pole to push each other from a circle.
RC Etten-Leur
On 29 August 1971, REL entered an AAC tournament with only seven players. It combined with an equally short Castricum side as CASAREL and finished second in the losers' round.
RC Greate Pier
Club and broadcaster accounts agree that rugby was played in Leeuwarden on 16 April 1916. Greate Pier opened its new clubhouse exactly 100 years later with an exhibition about rugby and the First World War.
RC Groningen
The old Esserberg hut was small, dilapidated, insecure and equipped with primitive sanitation. With a limited budget, its replacement was designed to be inexpensive, burglary-resistant and so club members could build most of it themselves.
RC Hawks
The Hawks say blue represents the former Haarlemmermeer lake and yellow the agricultural character of the Haarlemmermeer polder. The club describes the hawk as focused and persistent.
RC Hilversum
A 6 November 1954 federation circular announcing RC Hilversum's admission asked opposing clubs to bring their own ball because the new club lacked enough equipment.
RC Hoek van Holland
The club says The Hookers refers both to Hook of Holland and to the hooker position in the front row.
RC Nieuwegein
At Sportpark Rijnhuizen, the rugby pitch doubled as JSV's training field. The club therefore had to put up the posts before every home match.
RC Octopus
The club-history writer recalls travelling to Den Bosch to face The Dukes in plain white T-shirts. A 2014 local retrospective independently describes the heavy defeat as the base from which the new Uden club developed.
RC RCC
Friends at Norbertuscollege started a civilian club after being unable to play for the soldiers-only KCT side. Overseas deployments later left KCT short of players, civilians filled in, and the two clubs merged.
RC Spakenburg
BU 2 bar owner Jaap van Diermen planned to play a fun rugby match against a bar from Baarn. Regular Bram de Graaf asked why they did not simply start a club, and thirty to forty people attended the founding meeting in BU 2's back room.
RC Sparta
Sparta Cricket 1888's history says it created rugby and jeu de boules clubs in 2006 as separate legal entities. The jeu de boules club says all three moved together to the Schollebos in 2012 while remaining separate entities.
RC The Bassets
The club's archived history says the chairman's Basset puppy walked across the bar during the naming meeting. It says the club chose The Bassets while English animal names were fashionable among Dutch rugby clubs.
RC The Big Bulls
The clubhouse opened on 1 September 2018 after being built in its entirety by club members.
RC The Big Stones
Stonehome opened on 25 August 2001 after being wrapped like a mystery artwork before the reveal. About seventy people contributed eighteen months of their free time to the clubhouse.
RC The Dukes
The Dukes uses the regional phrase Brabants kwartiertje for its own habitual slow starts.
RC The Pink Panthers
The club traces its origin to the rugby section of the marines' sports association SVMD in Doorn. Its history says repeated overseas exercises made it difficult to field that side, so civilians were invited in around 1979; about twenty responded, and the mostly civilian section later considered separating from SVMD.
RC The Smugglers
The club says its first clubhouse hut came from Cebo in IJmuiden and was bought for one symbolic guilder. A Thursday storm in 1990 removed its roof within half an hour, and the repaired section remained the strongest part until demolition.
RC Wageningen
The club history dates the match to 12 April 1975 and records a 4–0 result. It also says the third half ran so long that some visiting Olifantjes missed their transport home.
RC Waterland
The club's history says members built a wooden shack after its first year and called it the clubhouse. In 1988, members designed and built a brick clubhouse at the Van IJsendijkstraat site; the dossier separately records a later enlargement.
RC West-Friesland
The club says its English-language song was written in 1996 to the tune of The Wild Rover. Members sing it together after training, matches and club evenings.
RC Zwolle
The club traces its origin to a 1974 Koninginnedag demonstration match played by men working in Zwolle who already played rugby at clubs elsewhere in the Netherlands. Recruitment then continued in the pubs.
RCT
In its obituary for Hans van der Meijs, Rugby Club Tilburg names him as one of its founders and says that during fifty years of membership he served as canteen manager, treasurer and coach.
RFC Gouda
The club's archived history says six players were initially allowed to use football club GSV's training pitch on Saturday mornings in the late 1970s. The group grew to ten or fifteen and began playing friendlies before RFC Gouda's formal founding in 1980.
RFC Haarlem
A 2026 Dutch sports-association article, drawing partly on an honorary member's account, says an old construction hut served as RFC Haarlem's first clubhouse. It says the current clubhouse opened in 2019 after extensive club fundraising and now runs without gas.
RFC Oisterwijk Oysters
The club says Rugby Football Club Oisterwijk Oysters was founded on 29 February 1976 by Karel Bakx, Pieter Dröge and Eddy Bicker.
RFC Stichtsche
A former-player father says nearby rugby clubs were too far for parents with young children. Several fathers ran a children's clinic on the grass before the town hall in early summer 2012 and founded the club five quarters later.
RFC The Rams
In a 2018 local-news account, club representatives said The Rams had come close to folding around eight years earlier with only five paying members. The same account records that the club returned to growth.
Rotterdamse Studenten RC
RSRC reproduces a report of Rotterdam students playing DSR-C around the First World War, while stressing that rugby did not take root in the city until 1968.
RRC
The club says several Rotterdammers founded RRC in September 1940 and used an English sport, royal orange and Rotterdam green as a visible form of resistance to the German occupation.
RUS
The federation champions table records a 2001/02 title and five consecutive championships from 2011/12 through 2015/16.
SRC Rush
The club says a friendly contractor lent the young association a builder's hut as its first clubhouse. Its current clubhouse is still called De Keet.
SRC Thor
After losing its previous home, Thor bought the boat with shares sold to members' parents and a brewery loan. It has served as the clubhouse since 1995 and is separate from the rugby pitch.
SVRC
Virgiel's own page says a group of its members decided to pick up a rugby ball and form SVRC in 2007. SVRC's current site describes the club as Virgiel's rugby association.
The Hague Hornets
The club history traces the Hornets from WRC Te Werve's second-team student side to independence in summer 2021. It records housemates, socials, songs and commandments as part of that development.
TSRC Tarantula
The club's 2013–2014 annual report records a Kruikencup match with RC Tilburg and a Hapjesschaal match against the Royal Military Academy.
URC
URC says it was founded in 1967 as the Netherlands' seventeenth rugby association and began on the sports fields at Manitobadreef. Its 2010 statutes state a purpose of giving people in Utrecht and the surrounding area an opportunity to play rugby.
USRS
The club history places the founding meeting at Voorstraat 66 bis and says the first board came from just over twenty members. Membership was initially restricted to male U.S.C. members before the society opened to male students at universities and universities of applied sciences.
Voorburgse RC
The dossier records member bonds funding the permanent clubhouse after years of temporary shelter and member-led interim arrangements.
VRC The Vets
Members, former members and volunteers put thousands of hours into the replacement for the club's old accommodation. Municipal plans specified four changing rooms and modern sanitary facilities, and local reporting says the new gas-free building opened in November 2025.
Wassenaar Warriors
Founded around the British School in 1976, the club moved to Wassenaar and changed its name in September 2020. It now describes growth across Dutch, French and other international communities.
WRC Te Werve
The club history traces one predecessor to rugby played from 1953 at the Te Werve estate, which De Bataafse Petroleum Maatschappij had made into a staff sports and recreation centre. It traces the other to Wateringse Rugbyclub, founded in April 1967 and better known as KMD Rugby. The two clubs continued together as WRC Te Werve in May 2014.
Zaanse RC
The club traces its start to three Zaandijk footballers responding to distressing events around a football match in late 2012. It began inside z.v.v. Zaandijk after a February 2013 clinic.
ZRC De Duuvels
The club says it bought an old municipal classroom in 1985 and members converted it into a clubhouse. The same account says the building moved with the club in 1992 and has since been modernised beyond recognition.
