Angouleme

Fédérale 2 does not carry the weight of a top division, but the perfect record Soyaux Angoulême XV Charente put together to win it in 2014 did: twenty-five matches, twenty-five wins, a 23–13 defeat of SC Graulhet in the final that sent the club up to Fédérale 1. That campaign gave the modern club its first silverware since the 2010 merger of the old Sporting Club d'Angoulême, itself dating to 1910, with the Rugby Club de Soyaux.

Promotion did not stop there. Two years after the Fédérale 2 title, the club beat Bourg-en-Bresse to reach Pro D2, and by 2022 it had climbed back there a second time after relegation, winning the Nationale championship the year it finished as runner-up nationally, a 38–10 loss to RC Massy in the final that still capped the season that returned Soyaux Angoulême to the second tier. The 2025–26 campaign has taken the club into the Pro D2 playoff phases.

Before the merger, SCA had already known this kind of story once: champions of France in Groupe B in 1986, beating SO Voiron 22–17.

Jonny May arrived in 2024 carrying 78 England caps from Gloucester and Leicester Tigers, a signing of a different order for a club at this level. Fabrice Landreau, who started out at SCA in 1992 and later won a French title with Stade Français, now works as the club's Rugby Director. Stade Chanzy, where the team plays, holds 8,000.

Twenty-five wins from twenty-five matches remains the number that opened the door to everything since.