Budowlani Lodz

Budowlani return to the Ekstraliga for the 2023/24 season.

The trouble traces to 2011, when the senior team was taken over by a new entity that went on to become Budo 2011 Aleksandrów Łódzki, leaving Budowlani to start again below.

None of that was in view in the 1980s and 2000s, when Budowlani won the Polish Championship five times — 1983, then a run of four titles between 2006 and 2010 — and added five Polish Cups between 1992 and 2012. The club's training base on Górnicza Street, with its two rugby pitches and no room for spectators, says something about where rugby in Łódź is actually played; for fixtures that draw a crowd, Budowlani have used the SMS sports ground and, for the largest occasions, the 18,029-capacity Municipal Stadium.

The playing strength through the championship years ran through national team forwards such as Kazimierz Matczak and Zbigniew Kiciński, though it was the club as an institution, founded in 1948 and revived as a rugby section in 1968 by Ryszard Wiejski and Stanisław Musiałczyk, that carried the game in the city long before any of them arrived.