More than just a Rugby Club...

In addition to all things rugby we also have a dynamic social element to the club. Ever since our 5th year anniversary in 2003 we have organized an annual Ball which involves gowns and tuxedoes (or dodgy polyester office suits and nylon ties for some), aperitifs, live bands, DJs, dancing, full buffet dinners, and even once an inflatable jousting podium and competition.

When we are not playing, you will often find us cheering along to rugby (and sometimes even football) matches shown at our 'Club house' is at The Old Inn (76 Rue Washington, Ixelles), home of the best burgers in town!

We also organize annual “rugby” tours and to date we have flown or traveled en masse to Kent, Massachusetts & New Hampshire, Provence, Bavaria, Catalonia & Aragon, Munster, Lombardy, Languedoc-Roussillon, and Andalusia.  That’s a tour a year and always, of course, to somewhere where high culture and history beckons - not to mention a 35 course meal or other now mythical engagements. Our proud record to date is of never having won a match whilst on Tour!

Then there are the very well attended Christmas dinners in venues often too fancy for our own good. These degenerate, after mass migration to the nearest night-club, into an all night frenzy and disconcerting display of quivering, spasmodic or swaying and unsteady dance moves by pretty much all present.

Our season is also interspersed with fund-raising pub-quizzes which play host to dubious insider trading of the answers to impossibly random and ambiguous questions such as: How high is high? Recently it would seem that a crack semi-professional team specializing in the esoteric arts and erotica and partly made up of now retired rugby players has gotten into the habit of winning the top prize. Fear not, we have outsmarted them by keeping the best prizes for 2nd place and below.

Though we have often tried to mask our activities as being integral to all-important recruitment drives in truth, once embarked upon, our relatively frequent bar-hopping becomes quite a shameless opportunity to mix and sample Belgium’s unparalleled variety of fine beers. These are also good opportunities to verify who can safely handle the local grog and who we would be better advised to be felt behind to mop up the changing rooms.

Added to these myriad activities there are also of course the occasional BBQs, squash, go-karting or paintball challenges and cultural trips to the Gent Whiskey Festival, Antwerp or Munich Beer Festival, etc.

Needless to say we also go as often as possible, in pioneering groups of three or more, to foreign climes to see RBS 6 Nations or Heineken Cup matches as well as, though evidently less frequently, World Cup matches. As long as they don’t clash with one of our own scheduled matches of course, as we are still smarting from the now infamous “Fergal incident”!

So you see, we really are more than just a rugby club……..