| Full name | Rugby Club Toulonnais | |||
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| Founded | 1908 | |||
| Location | Toulon, France | |||
| Ground(s) | Stade Mayol (Capacity: 13,700) | |||
| President | Mourad Boudjellal | |||
| Coach(es) | Bernard Laporte Olivier Azam (Forwards) Pierre Mignoni (Backs) David Fraisse (Defense) |
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| Captain(s) | Joe van Niekerk | |||
| League(s) | Top 14 | |||
| 2010–11 | 8th | |||
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| Official website | ||||
| www.rctoulon.com/en/ | ||||
RC Toulonnais (in full Rugby Club Toulonnais, with only "Rugby" capitalized in French; also known as RCT or just Toulon) is a French professional rugby union club based in Toulon in Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur. A current participant in the first-tier Top 14 competition, they have won the national competition on three occasions.
Established in 1908, Toulon currently play their home games at the Stade Mayol, although they have begun to take high-profile matches to the 60,000-seat Stade Vélodrome in Marseille, playing one match there in 2008–09 and two in both 2009–10 and 2010–11. The club colours are red and black. Toulon were Pro D2 champions in 2005, but after finishing 14th in the 2005-06 Top 14 season, they were relegated back down. After signing a number of high profile players, the club made a strong run at promotion in the 2006–07 season, and succeeded in their promotion quest in 2007–08, winning that season's Pro D2 crown with two rounds to spare. They struggled to avoid relegation for much of the 2008–09 Top 14 season, but a late-season surge brought them to ninth place and safety. Their 2009–10 Top 14 season was more successful, with a second-place regular-season finish and a semifinal place domestically and a runner-up finish in the 2009–10 European Challenge Cup.
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Rugby Club Toulonnais was founded on June 3, 1908 as a merger of Étoile Sportive Varoise and members of the Stade Varois, a club based in nearby La Seyne-sur-Mer. It took the club 23 years to reach the top of French rugby, when they won the 1931 championship against Lyon Olympique Universitaire (6–3, 2 tries to 1). The players were greeted by 30,000 people when they returned from Bordeaux, where the final had been held, and the town went crazy for several days.
Toulon remained one of the top French clubs, but they lost four consecutive finals scattered over 35 years (1948, 1968, 1971 et 1985). The 1985 extra-time defeat by Stade Toulousain left them with a lot of regrets, and playing in the most spectacular final ever (36–22) did nothing to alleviate the pain of losing. The Red and Black only waited two more years to finally lay their hands on the Bouclier de Brennus, as they defeated Racing at the Parc des Princes. The third title came in 1992, against Biarritz Olympique, in Serge Blanco’s last match and last chance to win the title.
For eight years, Toulon was not particularly successful and were in heavy financial trouble (a 10 million franc deficit) forced the Ligue Nationale de Rugby to demote them to the Second Division in July 2000. The club missed an immediate return the next year, going down in the final to Montauban, as only one club was promoted that year. It took them five more years to do so as RCT went on to win the Pro D2 title. Unfortunately, despite immense popular support (gates averaged more than 12,000), and a lot of enthusiasm, they only managed to win three games out of 26 and were relegated after only a season.
A new president, Mourad Boudjellal, a born-and-bred Toulonnais who made his fortune in the comic strip business, promised to build a huge team. He said: "I invented the Top 15, with a team that could be competitive in the Top 14”.[1] He signed a high number of first-class players, some of them well above 30, like Jean-Jacques Crenca, Yann Delaigue, Gonzalo Quesada and Dan Luger. He created a lot of buzz around the team as he managed to sign former All Blacks captain Tana Umaga, who arrived in Toulon right after the end ot the Air New Zealand Cup on October 26, 2006. The contract was rumoured to be around €300,000 (£200,000), which Boudjellal claimed to pay from his own pocket, for only 8 to 10 matches. In a 2010 interview, Boudjellal would say about his decision to pursue Umaga, "It was incredible, because we were in the second division and I was speaking with the best player in the world. But he said yes and came to play with Toulon."[2]
Boudjellal continued to sign high-profile veteran players, including Australia captain and all-time international caps leader George Gregan, reportedly paid €400,000 out of Boudjellal's pocket,[3] All Blacks' all-time scoring leader Andrew Mehrtens,[4][5] and Jonny Wilkinson.
Back in Pro D2 for the 2006–07 season, Toulon finish fourth in the league, putting them in the promotion playoffs for a place in the Top 14, but they lost in the promotion semifinals 21–17 at La Rochelle. The following season Toulon headed the table from early on, never dropping from the top spot on their way to clinching promotion with two rounds to spare. The 2008–09 season proved to be one of consolidation. Umaga had been handed the coaching reins, but as Boudjellal would later say, "The first season in the Top 14 was very difficult and I learned that Tana Umaga was not yet ready to give up playing – and that he's not a manager."[2] The team managed to survive that season, using a late-season surge to avoid a relegation scare. Toulon had a much more successful 2009–10 campaign, with Wilkinson leading the charge. He would be named the top fly-half of the year in France by leading rugby publication Midi Olympique,[6] and would also be recalled to the England national team. Domestically, Toulon finished second on the league table, losing out to Perpignan for the top spot on a tiebreaker. This finish gave them a spot in the 2010–11 Heineken Cup, and also a first-round bye in that season's Top 14 playoffs. Toulon's domestic campaign ended in the semifinals with a 35–29 extra-time loss to eventual champion Clermont in Saint-Étienne.
Toulon's Amlin Challenge Cup campaign proved even more successful. They finished top of their pool and advanced to the knockout stage, crushing Scarlets 38–12 in the quarterfinals at Stade Mayol and surviving a hard-fought match against Connacht in Galway 19–12. The win over Connacht meant that Toulon would get their preferred final venue of the Vélodrome on May 23, where they lost to the Cardiff Blues 28–21, missing out on silverware for the season.
On the day of his arrival in Paris, on May 1, 1895, just before his first concert, Félix Mayol was met by a female friend at the station, who gave him some lily-of-the-valley, a flower people traditionally exchange on May 1 in France. He pinned it on his lapel, his concert was a success and Mayol, who was superstitious, made the lily-of-the-valley his personal emblem. It was taken up by the rugby club in 1921.
In 1920, its stadium was inaugurated. It is named after Félix Mayol, a very popular concert hall singer from Toulon who had succeeded in Paris in the early 20th century. Shortly after World War I, he purchased what would be the stadium site and donated it to the club. It is one of the few French stadiums to be almost completely surrounded by the city and overlooks the Toulon bay and military harbour in the Mediterranean.
| Date | Winners | Runners-up | Score | Venue | Spectators |
| 10 May 1931 | RC Toulon | Lyon OU | 6–3 | Parc Lescure, Bordeaux | 10,000 |
| 18 April 1948 | FC Lourdes | RC Toulon | 11–3 | Stade des Ponts Jumeaux, Toulouse | 29,753 |
| 16 June 1968 | FC Lourdes | RC Toulon | 9–9 (aet) | Stadium Municipal, Toulouse | 28,526 |
| 16 May 1971 | Béziers | RC Toulon | 15–9 (aet) | Parc Lescure, Bordeaux | 27,737 |
| 25 May 1985 | Toulouse | RC Toulon | 36–22 (aet) | Parc des Princes, Paris | 37,000 |
| 22 May 1987 | RC Toulon | Racing Club de France | 15–12 | Parc des Princes, Paris | 48,000 |
| 27 May 1989 | Toulouse | RC Toulon | 18–12 | Parc des Princes, Paris | 48,000 |
| 6 June 1992 | RC Toulon | Biarritz | 19–14 | Parc des Princes, Paris | 48,000 |
| Year | Winner | Score | Runner-up |
| 1934 | Stade Toulousain RC Toulon |
0–0 (tied, joint winners) | |
| 1939 | Section Paloise | 5–0 | RC Toulon |
| 1954 | FC Lourdes | 28–12 | RC Toulon |
| 1970 | RC Toulon | 25–22 | SU Agen |
| 1983 | SU Agen | 29–7 | RC Toulon |
| Date | Winner | Score | Runner-up | Venue |
| 23 May 2010 | Cardiff Blues | 28–21 | RC Toulon | Stade Vélodrome, Marseille |
Note: Flags indicate national union as has been defined under IRB eligibility rules. Players may hold more than one non-IRB nationality.
Under LNR rules, teams are limited to two players of non-EU nationality on their domestic matchday rosters. (Henjak was dropped from Toulon's domestic roster in November 2009 for this reason, but remained on the club's European roster, and captained the side in 2009–10 Challenge Cup matches.) However, a large number of players whose primary nationality is outside the EU are exempt from this quota for various reasons.
All players named are capped in rugby union unless indicated otherwise.
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